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EVERY- MEMBER 
EVANGELISM 



EVERY-MEMBER 
EVANGELISM 




By 

J.E.CONANT,D.D. 

Bible Teacher and Evangelist 

Author of 
Why the Pastor Failed," "Is It Scholarly to he Ortho- 
dox f" "Is Atonement by Substitution Reasonablef" 
"Divine Dynamite," "The Church, the 
Schools, and Evolution" 



INTRODUCTION 
By 

J. C. MASSEE, D.D. 

Pastor of 

Tbbmont Temple 

Boston 



PHILADELPHIA 
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES COMPANY 

1922 



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Copyright, 1922, by 
The Sunday School Times Company 



Printed in the United States of America 



DEC 30 1922 

C1A690880 



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CONTENTS 

Introduction v 

Preface ix 

Part I 

THE DIVINE PROGRAM 

Introductory 1 

Scripture Exposition 5 

The Program Unfolded 5 

The Program Illustrated .... 11 

The Program Perpetuated .... 18 

Practical Application 30 

We Must Go Individually .... 31 

We Must Go Systematically ... 36 

Satanic Opposition ...... 41 

How Satan Hindered the Divine Program 41 
How Satan Keeps the Divine Program 

Hindered 48 

Part II 

THE DIVINE PURPOSE 

Introductory 59 

This Program Will Save the Church . . 60 

The Present Decline 64 

The Need of Revival 76 

iii 



iv Contents 

This Program Will Reach the Lost . . 86 

Why the Church Is FaiUng . . . 87 

When the Church Succeeds .... 96 

Part III 

THE DIVINE POWER 

Introductory . 120 

The Empowering Life of Christ . . . 124 

The Meaning of the Crucified Life . . 125 

The Method of Entering the Crucified Life 142 

The Overflowing Love of Christ . . . 163 

The Love of Christ Impels the Christian . 167 

The Love of Christ Compels the Sinner . 176 

APPENDIX 

Every-Member Evangelism in Operation . . 184 

Organizing for Revival Meetings . . . 185 

Making This Program Permanent . . . 190 

The Divine Dynamics 193 



INTRODUCTION 

THE first great passion of the Lord Jesus Christ 
was, and is, for the souls of men. **The Son 
of man came to seek and to save that which was 
lost." In his intercessory prayer, recorded in John 
17, he prays not alone for those who are with him, 
but for all those who, through their word, should 
believe on his Name, that they might be sanctified 
as he was sanctified, in order that the world might 
know that the Father had sent him into the world. 

The Great Commission was not given to the 
Christian ministry, but to the Christian Church. It 
seems quite clear that when the Master met his 
disciples on the mountain in Galilee, ''above five 
hundred brethren" (1 Cor. 15:6) were together in 
obedience to his summons. It was to this group, 
probably containing all the avowed disciples of the 
Master at the time of his crucifixion — at least all 
who stood the shock of that crucifixion and main- 
tained the integrity of their faith beyond it — that 
he gave the Great Commission. The evangeliza- 
tion of men is therefore the task of the whole 
Church. 

Judged in the light of Acts 1 : 8, the duty of the 
Church in bearing witness to Christ for the purpose 
of persuading men to believe on Christ was to be 
continuous and simultaneous ; that is, it was to go 
on continuously and everywhere at once. The Com- 



r^^ Introduction 

mission certainly contemplates a continuous Church 
activity until the consummation of the Age. The 
very genius of the Gospel Christ gave his disciples 
to proclaim necessitates the dominance of the Chris- 
tian passion for souls. Wherever the Holy Spirit 
resides in the life of a believer, he is constantly tak- 
ing the things of Christ and showing them unto 
men. 

The author of this volume will point out the fact 
that it is not the task of the ministry to do the soul- 
winning w^ork of the Christian body. The Holy 
Spirit has given some apostles, and some prophets, 
and some evangelists, and some pastors and teach- 
ers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work 
of ministering, unto the building up of the body of 
Christ, Surely no right conception of the Christian 
ministry can degenerate into an itching ear for en- 
tertainment. An evangelical ministry without an 
evangelistic passion is a moral impossibility. To 
declare a church evangelical and to confess it non- 
evangelistic is to proclaim a living lie. A loving 
passion for Christ inevitably eventuates in a living 
passion for men. 

Ih a very vital sense all the problems which at- 
tend our organizations within the local church and 
within the larger grouping of churches easily find 
their solution in an intense evangelistic activity, and 
an intense evangelistic atmosphere. Pettiness, self- 
ishness, estrangements, prejudices, bitternesses, 
seem impossible in the presence of the miracle- 
working God whose power and presence are fre- 



.<^ 



Introduction vii 

quently demonstrated in the greatest of all miracles,V 
the regeneration of souls. There is a melting ten- 
derness of heart, a warm response of spirit, a quick- 
ened stimulation of mind, and an irresistible surge 
of fellowship proceeding from the joy of salvation 
as it flows constantly, frequently, into the lives of 
those who are being redeemed. Wherever this 
atmosphere is guarded and maintained it will hap- 
pen in the churches now as it happened following 
Pentecost. The Church will be all together in one 
place, they will pray with one accord, with single- 
ness of heart they will break bread, great joy will 
be upon the people, and with mighty power the 
ministers will give their testimony concerning the 
resurrection from the dead. 

There can be no substitute for this primal passion 
of the Christian individual and of the Christian 
Church. Without it the ministry becomes formal, 
the Church cold, the world indifferent. A passion- 
less ministry can never arouse a cold Church, and 
a cold Church can never witness convincingly to an 
indifferent world. The Christian Church to-day 
needs a revival of praying, preaching, and personal 
testimony to the intent of reaching and winning the 
lost to a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

This book which Dr. Conant has written should 
have a wide reading, for it will without doubt en- 
courage just those results. Profound in exposition, 
sane in Scriptural application, wise in practical sug- 
gestion, the book proceeds not alone from the pen, 
but from the heart of this devoted servant of God 



viii Introduction 

who is giving himself unceasingly to the work of 
the ministry. 

His work as an evangelist and Bible teacher is 
deepened and enriched by the fact that he has also 
been a pastor and writes as he labors in the keen 
appreciation of both pastoral and Church problems. 

I bespeak for the book, as I anticipate for it, a 
wude and thoughtful reading. 

J. C. Massee. 
Tremont Temple, Boston, 



PREFACE 

OF books on evangelism there are many. Nearly 
every phase of the subject has been so thor- 
oughly, Scripturally, and even exhaustively covered 
that another book added to the already long and 
excellent list seems almost out of place. And it 
would, indeed, be altogether out of place but for an 
undoubted lack of emphasis in much if not almost 
all that has been written on two most fundamental 
and vital aspects of evangelism. 

One of those fundamentals has to do with the 
question as to just what, precisely, the New Tes- 
tament program of evangelism is. The author does 
not know of a single discussion of the subject that 
puts the responsibility for evangelism altogether 
where the New Testament places it — on every 
individual Christian, Much has been written on 
individual work for the lost, it is true, and many 
who have read have been stirred up to undertake 
the work, but there has been little if any systematic 
exposition of those Scriptures which set forth the 
divine program of evangelism which is summed up 
in the Great Commission. 

It is popularly supposed that "Go ye into all the 
world, and preach the gospel to every creature" 
is an appeal to enter the ministry, and especially 
to go as a missionary. The vast majority of 
Christians have never dreamed that it is a per^ 

ix 



^. 



Preface 



sonal, individual command to every child of God 
to go into his own personal world and do soul-win- 
ning witnessing to every creature. And it is out of 
this misconception that the popular but utterly un- 
scriptural phrase, *lf we cannot go, we can send 
some one in our place/' has been coined. But the 
truth is, we are never told to "either go or send." 
It is God's prerogative to send ; not ours. We are 
commanded to do one thing only, and that is to GO. 
And that is a command that cannot be obeyed by 
proxy; it can be obeyed only in person. And so it 
is a command to every Christian to go with the 
Gospel testimony to every lost one in his own per- 
sonal world, as well as a command for those who 
are providentially separated unto that work to go 
out into every corner of the geographical world. 

But this is not the popular conception of evan- 
gelism. It is generally understood to consist prin- 
cipally of formal, public Gospel discourses, deliv- 
ered in some meeting-place into which the lost have 
been invited in the hope that the preacher's mes- 
sage will result in their salvation. The New Testa- 
ment, however, as illustrated by the events of Pen- 
tecost, the Church's pattern day for the whole Age, 
makes public and formal witnessing the climax and 
culmination of that private and informal witness- 
ing which the Great Commission commands each 
Christian to do in his own immediate personal 
world. This alone is the New Testament program 
of evangelism. And the Church will never reach 
the lost in any significant numbers until this pro- 



Preface xi' 

gram is followed, in the power of the Spirit, with 
fidelity and exactness. 

The other fundamental of the evangeHstic pro- 
gram which the author feels has had much less em- 
phasis than it needs is the fact that while the Great 
Commission is sufficient authority for every-mem- 
ber evangelism, it is not and cannot become suffi- 
cient motive. We may be authorized, and urged, 
and commanded to take the Gospel in person to the 
lost, but the power to go does not lie in a command ; 
it lies in a Person. 

It is true that all who write on this theme lay 
more or less emphasis on the need of the Holy 
Spirit's power, but the author has never met with 
any discussion of evangelism that emphasizes the 
divine dynamics quite as the attempt is made to 
emphasize them in these pages. It is not we who 
win the lost by the help of Christ, it is Christ him- 
self who does the soul-winning through the lives 
and lips of yielded disciples. And so it is not so 
much a question either of equipment or lack of it, 
as it is a question of his absolute possession and 
control, by the Holy Spirit, of whatever equipment 
we may have. When the Holy Spirit controls a 
Christian, he will be constrained, impelled, borne 
along, to go after the lost, command or no com- 
mand. The great essential, therefore, in soul-win- 
ning is to be completely possessed, through the ful- 
ness of the Spirit, by him whose life on earth it 
was to seek and to save the lost. 

Much is being said these days about the life of 



xii Preface 

victory in Christ. The real evidence of victorious 
living Hes not in an experience of joy, no matter 
how wonderful and continuous, but in what the 
indwelling life of the Victor does in and through 
us. 'To me to live is Christ'' (Phil. 1:21)— that 
is the life of victory, because the Victor himself 
lives it within us. And when the life of him whose 
passion for the lost led him to the death of the cross 
is lived in us, the same passion will become the 
normal attitude of our lives toward the lost, for we 
shall have become a continuous ''living sacrifice" 
that they might live. This is at once both the test 
and the evidence that the crucified and risen life of 
the victorious One is being lived in us to the point 
of personal victory. There can be no victorious 
living apart from a spontaneous and all-consum- 
ing passion for continuous personal evangelism. 

These, then, are the two main emphases of the 
following pages. It is not the mechanics but the 
dynamics of individual work for the lost that we 
are to study. We are to discover that every Chris- 
tian, without exception, is to do this work; then 
we are to learn that no Christian, no matter what 
his capacity and training, can possibly do it; then 
we are to find that he whose commands are always 
his enablings is the only one who can do it, and 
that he will and does do it through every yielded 
disciple; and we are also to see the vital relation- 
ship between this work and all public evangelism. 

The whole Church is in a most serious condition. 
Not only have we not been increasing as fast as the 



Preface xiii 

population, but some of the larger denominations 
have been reporting actual net losses in some late 
years. Public evangelism seems to be occupying an 
increasingly small and less vital place in the life of 
the Church, while worldliness and apostasy are tak- 
ing such a hold on the very vitals of Church life 
that private evangelism is fast disappearing. If 
present history is to be reversed and the victorious 
history of other days repeated, the Church must 
return to a literal obedience to the divine Program, 
and surrender to utter dependence on the divine 
power. To this end these pages have been written. 
This book goes forth with the prayer that through 
its reading a great company of the Lord's people 
may allow the Holy Spirit to thrust them forth 
into a ripened harvest. 

J. E. CONANT. 

Chicago, III., January, 1^22. 



Part I 
THE DIVINE PROGRAM 



INTRODUCTORY 

MANY an earnest and consecrated pastor is 
heartbroken over the failure of his people to 
reach the lost for Christ in any significant numbers. 

More than once has such a pastor gone from his 
knees to his pulpit with a heart surcharged with 
his own passion for a lost humanity, and a divinely 
given yearning that his people might be possessed 
by the same passion. 

More than once has he set before them the call 
to the work of soul-winning until it has seemed as 
though no one could fail to respond. 

More than once has he risen to such an inten- 
sity of appeal that it has seemed as though the Son 
of God himself was pouring out his own yearning 
for a lost world through human heart and lips. 

And as he has pleaded with his people, he has 
seen them rise to heights of inspired and enthu- 
siastic resolve. He has seen the evidence, in their 
earnest faces, of a determination to give their lives 
as never before to the work of soul-winning. In- 
deed, he has seen many of them give solemn public 
pledge before God that seeking to win the lost to 
Christ should be the main purpose of their lives 

2 — June 22. ^ 



/^ 



Every-Member Evangelism 



from that day forward. And then as he has 
watched them leave the service and scatter into the 
field, he has anticipated such results from that hour 
as the church had never before seen. 

But he was doomed to sad and bitter disappoint- 
ment. The enthusiastic resolutions of that holy 
hour seemed to vanish ere the next Sunday, like a 
mist before the rising sun. 

Perhaps he could detect a little increased activity 
on the part of a pitiably small handful of his most 
earnest people, but he was compelled to acknowl- 
edge that little, if anything, of increased results in 
soul-winning ever came from that service which 
had seemed to promise so much. 

The pastor had failed! 

Perhaps this was another failure! 

Why had he failed ? 

He was certain there was nothing consciously 
wrong between himself and his Lord. He was surq 
of the Holy Spirit's leading and enabling in select- 
ing his theme and making his appeal. He was con- 
vinced that in his longing for a church enthusias- 
tically seeking after the lost he was never more 
honestly desirous of the glory of God. 

And as for his people, he was certain they were 
God's children. He felt sure their response to his 
appeal was out of a genuine love for Christ and a 
lost world. And he was convinced that they went 
out of that service with a purpose to win the lost 
as honest as any company of Christians ever had. 
And yet little or nothing had resulted from it! 



Introductory ^ 

Why had that pastor failed? What had he left 
undone? What more could he do? There cer- 
tainly was a reason for that failure, but what 
was it? 

Was not the trouble something like this? The 
appeal of that consecrated pastor was completely 
successful in securing the honest purpose from his 
people to win the lost to Christ, and his people were 
thoroughly sincere in their determination to give 
themselves to that work; but as they turned from 
the church door and faced their task, they were 
confronted by a great field — perhaps one that spread 
out over a large city, and the very bigness of their 
task bewildered them. They were not only will- 
ing to go after the lost, but were enthusiastic in 
their anticipation of results, but where, in all that 
great field, were they to begin? 

Perhaps some of them did try to begin — some- 
where, but the indefinite anywhereness of their task, 
the lack of responsibility for any definite section of 
the field, and the sense of being unharnessed and 
alone in the open, first produced discouragement 
because the task seemed too big for them, then led 
to delay because it was all so indefinite, and finally 
brought defeat. 

It was not lack of a purpose so much as lack of 
a program that accomplished that defeat. 

A purpose may start us toward a task, and may 
even get us at work on it, but we can never be 
kept at work very long without a program. 

When men undertake to run a business of their 



4 Every -Member Evangelism 

own, they carry it on according to a system, a 
method, a program, even to the last detail ; and the 
Great Commission absolutely demands that the soul- 
winning work of the Church be organized and 
carried on according to a program. And when we 
make even a cursory study of the Commission and 
all the related passages we find not only what the 
divine Program for the work of soul-winning is, 
but what the divine Purpose was in giving the 
Church that program, and also what is the source 
and nature of the divine Power by which the pro- 
gram is to be carried out. We shall therefore 
relate our study to these three thoughts. 



CHAPTER I 
SCRIPTURE EXPOSITION 

AS we study the Lord's Program for his Church, 
we shall want to know two or three very 
definite things about it. 

We shall need, first of all, to know what the 
Program is. 

We shall then be glad to know if there is a New 
Testament illustration of the way the Lord expects 
it to be worked out. 

We shall also need to know what provision the 
Lord has made to keep it in operation throughout 
the Church Age. 

The New Testament furnishes abundant infor- 
mation on all these points, and we therefore turn 
to what it says. 

/. The Program Unfolded 

As to what the Program is, we turn naturally to 
the words of Christ, and especially to what he said 
to his disciples just before his crucifixion, and also 
between his resurrection and ascension; for here, 
if anywhere, we are likely to find the sum of all 
his previous instruction and the outline of his pur- 
poses concerning the future of his Church. And 
as we turn to the passages that contain Christ's 
last words, we are not disappointed. 

5 



/ 



Every- Member Evangelism 

THE church's mission 



If we set the pre-crucifixion and pre-ascension 
words of Christ all down by themselves and give 
them careful study, we cannot fail to notice that 
the word '"witness" is the key to all of them. 

And if we analyze them we shall find that wit- 
nessing is to be the main work of the whole Church 
in the whole world throughout the whole Age.^ 

Notice how this is all summed up in the Great 
Commission as Mark^ gives it to us, with one phrase 
from Matthew added.^ 

**Go ye'' is a command to every Christian; that 
is, to the whole Church. 

"Into all the world" certainly includes every 
Christian's personal world, for it takes all the per- 
sonal worlds of all Christians scattered abroad over 
the earth added together to cover the geographical 
world. That is, the whole Church is to go into 
the whole world. 

'*And preach the Gospel," if it means anythfng, 
must certainly mean to witness, or to tell the Good 
News of salvation through Christ, and this defines 
the central activity of the Church. That is, wit- 
nessing is the main work of the whole Church 
throughout the whole world; while ''to every crea- 
ture" makes it the individual work of every Chris- 
tian to every unsaved one. 

And then Matthew adds Christ's promise, "Lo, 

iDr. Arthur T. Pierson says that witnessing is the "whole work 
of the whole Church for the whole Age." 
2Mark 6:15. SMatt. 28:20. 



Scripture Exposition "N^ 

I am with you all the days, even unto the consum- 
mation of the age/'^ which clearly indicates that 
this work is to be continued throughout the whole 
Age. 

The Commission according to Mark, therefore, 
with one phrase from Matthew, tells us that wit- 
nessing is the main work of the whole Church in 
the whole world throughout the whole Age. 

Christ also said just before he ascended that this 
witnessing was to be done ''both'' in Jerusalem, 
Judaea, Samaria, and to *'the uttermost part of the 
earth,''^ which means, according to Dr. Henry C. 
Mabie, that the Lord's people are to witness, not 
consecutively from one place to another, but simul- 
taneously in every part of earth at once. 

THE church's message 

When we turn to that phase of the Commission 
set forth by Luke, we have the content of our tes- 
timony given to us. 

You recall that at the close of the day of Christ's 
resurrection, after he had appeared to the two Em- 
maus disciples, he suddenly appeared in the midst 
of the disciples who were gathered together in Jeru- 
salem discussing the news of the resurrection. 

After showing his startled disciples his hands 
and his feet, and eating a piece of broiled fish to 
convince them that it was really himself, he re- 
minded them of how he had told them of all these 
things before his crucifixion, and of how he had 
simply been fulfilling what the Scriptures had fore- 

IMatt. 28:20 (Gr.). ^Acts 1:8. 



<o Every -Member Evangelism 

told, and then he gave them the content of their 
message — ^and ours — to a lost world.^ 

*'Ye are witnesses of these things/' said Christ, 
which refers back to what he had just been saying. 
And as we analyze what he said, we find that our 
witnessing has to do with three distinct themes: 

First, WQ are to set forth the testimony of Scrip- 
ture to Christ, and show how all the things to which 
Scripture witnesses concerning him either have been 
or will yet be fulfilled. 

Again, we are to bear witness to his unique suf- 
ferings, his atoning death, and his triumphant res- 
urrection. 

Still further, we are to tell everywhere the Good 
News of the remission of sins for all who repent 
and believe. 

Then in the last words he spoke before he as- 
cended, Christ summed up the message of the 
Church in a single sentence, when he said: **Ye 
shall be witnesses unto Me/' Not simply to a lot 
of information about him, however useful in its 
place, but to Christ himself. 

THE church's motives 

In immediate connection with the content of our 
testimony is set down Christ's promise of the Holy 
Spirit,^ who is to be our enablement in our testi- 
mony, and his explicit command to the disciples to 
wait till the Holy Spirit had come to begin his min- 
istry in them before they should start out on their 
ministry of witnessing. 



»Luke 24:36-48. «Lukc 24:49. 



Scripture Exposition ^ 



This instruction of Christ's to wait for the Holy 
Spirit is of the utmost significance, for it indicates' 
beyond all question that we not only will not, but- 
even cannot obey the Great Commission apart fronn 
the power of the Spirit. 

This is set forth in symbol in a most significant 
way in the details that John tells us of what hap- 
pened on the evening of the resurrection day.^ 

As Christ suddenly appeared in the midst of the 
assembled disciples without a door being opened, 
the first thing he did was to show them his wounded 
hands and side — the visible evidences of his atoning 
work. This was to be the heart of their testimony 
to him. 

Then he commanded them to go, even as his 
Father had sent him. This was his command to 
go with their testimony. 

But he does not stop there. The content of their 
testimony had been indicated, and they had been 
commanded to go with it, but Christ knew they 
would never go simply under the impulse of a com- 
mand. So he breathed on them and said: "Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Spirit" — a symbolic action look- 
ing forward to Pentecost. And so imperative was 
his instruction just before he ascended to wait for 
the empowering of the Spirit that we know, beyond 
peradventure, that successful witnessing apart from 
that empowering is an utter impossibility. 

ijohn 20;19.23. 



Id Every -Member Evangelism 

PRAYER AND POWER 

There is one other thing that lies behind all this. 
While it does not appear in the Great Commission 
in so many words, yet it saturates the whole min- 
istry of Christ, and he also urges his disciples to it 
by example, exhortation, and command. That 
fundamental thing is prayer. The mechanics of 
the most perfect program possible, even of a pro- 
gram that God himself lays out, are utterly worth- 
less apart from the divine dynamics. And prayer 
alone makes it possible for us to be taken hold upon 
by the divine dynamics. "Men ought always to 
pray and not to faint," said Christ.^ Only so will 
they always be living channels of that message of 
an atoning Saviour from sin, thereby living in con- 
stant obedience to the Great Commission. 

THE COMPLETE CHURCH PROGRAM 

The Great Commission, therefore, when we sum 
it up, is a personal command to every Christian to 
go into every nook and corner of his personal 
world, and seek, by witnessing in the power of the 
Holy Spirit to the Good News of God's saving 
grace through the shed blood of Christ, to win every 
lost soul in his personal world to salvation. We 
are also so to scatter over the inhabited earth, as 
the providence of God leads and opens the way, 
that the whole world will be continuously and simul- 
taneously evangelized. With this agrees every pas- 



iLuke 18:1. 



Scripture Exposition tr 



sage that has any bearing on the mission of the 
Church. This defines with the utmost clearness 
what the Lord's Program for his Church is. 

//. The Program Illustrated 

The next thing we want to know is whether the 
Lord has given us a historical illustration of this 
Program actually at work, and we do not need to 
look far to find one. For the Holy Spirit gave us 
the pattern of the manner in which this Program 
is to be carried out in the events immediately sur- 
rounding the Day of Pentecost. These events were 
the divinely executed pattern of what the Lord pur- 
posed to keep doing through the Church during the 
whole Church Age. To find the divine significance 
of these events, therefore, will be to have set before 
us what the Church is expected to be doing to-day. 
And as added details unfold before us as we watch 
how the Holy Spirit led and empowered the dis- 
ciples to carry out Christ's command exactly as he 
gave it, no doubt can be left in our minds as to 
precisely what that Program is. 

THE PLACE OF PRAYER 

As the foundation and preparation for all the 
Holy Spirit was to do in the disciples and for the 
lost when he began his official ministry on earth, a 
period of time was given over entirely to prayer. 
This period was ten days in this instance, but the 
number of days means nothing except that it was 
that long before the Holy Spirit came to begin his 
official mission. The whole emphasis must be on 



u- 



^ 



Every- Member Evangelism 



the praying. This alone could prepare their hearts 
for what God was to do in them and through them, 
and it surely could not have been altogether without 
some bearing on the lost to whom they were to wit- 
ness, even though the Holy Spirit had not yet come. 
At any rate, it is certain that prayer, since the Holy 
Spirit has come, opens the pathway both for the 
divine preparation of the Christian's heart and the 
divine operation in the sinner's heart. 

POWER FOR WITNESSING 

Then came the events of Pentecost.^ The Lord 
had already indicated that he intended the disciples 
to do their witnessing in a systematic fashion when 
he divided the field into the broad districts of Jeru- 
salem, Judaea, Samaria, and **the uttermost part of 
the earth,'' and directed them to witness simul- 
taneously in all of them. And so it could not have 
been without this in view that he commanded them 
to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to start 
them on this work, for at Jerusalem were living 
"men out of every nation under heaven,"^ making 
it possible to witness simultaneously to representa- 
tives of every district he had named, from Jeru- 
salem to *'the uttermost part of the earth." This 
providence is very striking. 

Then when the Holy Spirit came, took posses- 
sion of the yielded disciples, and began working out 
through them the divine Program!, they were all so 
possessed by the Spirit as to be empowered to speak 
in the languages of **every nation under heaven." 

*Acts 2. "Acts 2:5. 



Scripture Exposition 



^ 



The direct connection between this miracle and 
the Great Commission cannot be missed. It lies on 
the surface. The disciples were enabled by it to 
begin witnessing at once and simultaneously to 
every nation representatively, from Jerusalem to 
those farthest away. By it the Holy Spirit indi- 
cated what he intended should actually be done in 
all the nations themselves, as soon as the way was 
providentially opened for the disciples to reach 
them, and what he intended should continue to be 
done throughout the Age. 

INFORMAL WITNESSING BY ALL 

The next step was to go to the lost with their 
testimony. They were therefore impelled by the 
Holy Spirit to go where the lost were. Note this 
well. They did not go to some public meeting- 
place and invite the people to come and hear their 
testimony, they took their testimony to the people. 

As soon as the marvel of their miraculous speech 
was noised abroad, great crowds from everywhere 
came together and listened with amazement, as the 
entire one hundred and twenty disciples, both men 
and women, praised God and witnessed to Lis 
mighty works in at least fifteen different languages. 

Notice that they were not preaching, for there 
were many among them — the women, for instance, 
as well as others — who were not called of God to 
public preaching and teaching. They were ztntness- 
ing, and they were all witnessing in the midst of a 
great company of the lost 



J?f Every-Member Evangelism 

How long this continued there is no means of 
telling, but the deep interest it aroused evidently- 
produced such consciousness and conviction of sin 
that finally a climax of decision becaqie possible. 

FORMAL WITNESSING BY ONE 

Then it was, and not before, that the Holy Spirit 
introduced the next step in the divine Program. 
He selected Peter, set him forth before a multitude 
of sinners made eager to listen by the private wit- 
nessing, and spoke through him the marvelous mes- 
sage of that first sermon of this present Age. This 
proved to be such a climax to the previous witness- 
ing as resulted in the decision of three thousand of 
that crowd to receive the crucified but risen and 
ascended Jesus as their Messiah and Saviour. 

Our misconceptions of this perfectly plain state- 
ment of events have worked havoc with our under- 
standing of the Great Commission. It is so widely 
imagined that those three thousand converts were 
brought to Christ by Peter's sermon alone that 
many almost think it is in the New Testament in 
so many words. But nothing could be farther from 
the truth. It was the private witnessing of all the 
disciples, reaching its climax and culmination in the 
public witnessing of one disciple, that brought the 
results of that day. In other words, Peter's ser- 
mon was the climax of that which had preceded; 
and if the private witnessing had not preceded the 
public witnessing, there is not the least likelihood 
that any such results would have followed. 



Scripture Exposition ISl^ 

WITNESSING TO CHRIST 

Now notice the theme of Peter's testimony. After 
explaining that this marvelous manifestation was of 
God, he begins immediately to preach the Christ 
whom they had crucified and God had raised from 
the dead. And he sets forth his theme with such 
masterly, — ^yes, such superhuman — skill, that we are 
forced to the conclusion that either the Holy Spirit 
spoke the message through the yielded disciple, or 
else that Peter was more than a man. 

The Messiahship and Lordship of this Jesus 
whom they had slain was the thing he started out 
to prove. But he diJ not mention it until he had 
proved it, and then it was irresistible. 

The proof consisted of three arguments. First 
he appealed to the miracles and wonders and signs 
which God wrought in their presence, and with 
which his audience was familiar, and as he did so 
he referred to him through whom God wrought 
them as a *'man," thus avoiding what must certainly 
have stirred up their prejudices and closed their 
minds to all he was yet to say. 

Then he turns to Scripture exposition, speaking 
first of the death of this **man" and of their com- 
plicity in that death, and then showing what Scrip- 
ture says about the resurrection of their promised 
Messiah, proving that the Messiah could not be held . 
by death because he was the "Holy One" of God. 
This very skilfully left the inference that their 
Messiah must have died or it would be impossible 
for God to raise him from the dead, and opened 



"16 Every- Member Evangelism 

the way for him to identify this "man" who had 
been slain with their Messiah. Then he boldly an- 
nounces that this Jesus whom they had crucified 
God had raised from the dead, and that they all 
were witnesses of that fact. But he does not yet 
announce him as their Messiah. 

He next turns to the manifestations of the Holy 
Spirit which are taking place before them at that 
moment, and testifies that this Jesus whom God 
had raised from the dead had also been exalted to 
the right hand of God, and that he was the one who 
had shed forth the manifestation of the Holy Spirit 
which had so amazed them. 

The conclusion was inevitable. This same Jesus 
whom they had crucified, God had made both Lord 
and Messiah. 

The result was that whatever consciousness of 
sin and personal concern had already been aroused 
through the personal testimony of the one hundred 
and twenty was now brought to so sharp a climax 
that it required decision of some sort. They were 
so pricked in the heart that they began to ask, 
'What shall we do?" 

Then Peter and the rest of them did such per- 
sonal work among them as resulted in three thou- 
sand of them accepting this Jesus as their Messiah, 
and pubhcly confessing their acceptance by baptism. 

Notice carefully that Christ crucified and raised 
again was the theme of Peter's testimony, and that 
he gave his testimony altogether in the enabling of 



Scripture Exposition Kt 

the Holy Spirit. Thus far the divine Program has 
been followed in detail. 

WITNESSING EVERYWHERE 

It will be recalled that later on the disciples failed 
to follow Christ in his command to scatter abroad 
and tell the Good News everywhere, and so the 
Lord let a little persecution slip through the aper- 
ture of his permission and drove them out. 

The record of this persecution and its results, 
which the Holy Spirit has written for us, is most 
significant. He tells us that they that were scat- 
tered abroad went everywhere preaching the Gos- 
pel, ^'except the apostles!''^ That is, the "laymen" 
went everywhere like living firebrands, setting 
things on fire wherever they went, while the 
''clergy" stayed behind. The way in which the 
Holy Spirit has recorded this bit of early history, 
as well as the history itself from which the record 
was made, gives us unmistakable evidence that the 
Lord intends the rank and file of the Church to go 
everywhere the Lord's providence places them, 
bearing constant witness to the saving grace of 
God. 

We are now where we can look back on the his- 
torical illustration of the divine Program. We can 
now see precisely how the Lord intends the Great 
Commission should be carried out. The one main 
business of the Church is to be witnessing ; the wit- 
nessing is to be both private and public, the private 
to be done by all, and the public to be done by those 

»Acts 8:1. 
3 



18 Every- Member Evangelism 

whom the Holy Spirit selects; the private witness- 
ing is intended to bring about such a condition of 
heart as shall open the way for a climax of decision 
under the influence of the public witnessing; the 
theme of the testimony is to be Christ himself in all 
that he is and does for the salvation of lost men; 
the witnessing is to be undertaken only at the lead- 
ing and under the power and enabling of the Holy 
Spirit ; and the spirit of prayer and praise is to sat- 
urate everything that is done. This is the exact 
meaning of the Great Commission, some of the 
important details being given added significance in 
the historical events we have been studying. 

///. The Program Perpetuated 

We are now much interested to know what pro- 
vision the Lord has made to keep this Program in 
successful operation throughout the Church Age. 

Our information on this subject we find, quite 
naturally, in the very heart of that great body of 
truth which the Lord gave us through Paul, the 
great Apostle to the Church. 

Christ's gifts to his church 

In Ephesians 4:11-16 Paul is setting forth the 
gifts vv^hich the ascended Christ gave his Church, 
and what he gave them for. Among these gifts are 
not only apostles and prophets, but also evangelists 
and pastors and teachers. 

The reason he set these gifts in his Church comes 
out with great clearness when we consult the vari- 



Scripture Exposition 19 

ous versions. In the Authorized Version, the mean- 
ing of verse 12 is obscured. It tells us that apostles, 
prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers were 
given "for the perfecting of the saints, for the 
work of the ministry," leaving the impression on 
the reader that the ^'perfecting of the saints" and 
the *'work of the ministry" are two separate and 
distinct phases of the one work of apostles, proph- 
ets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers. 

But the 1911 Bible says that these gifts were 
given to the Church for "the perfecting of the saints 
for the doing of service." 

Rotherham puts it, "With a view to the fitting 
of the saints for the work of ministering." 

Conybeare and Howson translate it, "For the 
perfecting of Gk)d's people in their appointed 
service." 

Weymouth gives it, "In order fully to equip his 
people for the work of serving." 

And Dr. Arthur T. Pier son says that these gifts 
were given to the Church **in order to perfect the 
saints in serviceableness." 

It is clear, therefore, that the Lord's people have 
an appointed ministry or service, and that he has 
given apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors 
and teachers to perfect them in that service. 

And when we follow this passage further to 
learn what that service is, all translations agree that 
it is the building up of the body of Christ, or the 
growth of the Church, and that this ministry is to 



20 Every -Member Evangelism 

continue until the Church comes to a full-grown 
man.^ 

Of what this growth consists will be brought 
out with unmistakable clearness if we analyze the 
nature of our service. 

HOW THE CHURCH GROWS 

Both evangelists and pastors and teachers have 
been set in the Church to perfect the Lord's people 
in the doing of a certain service. What kind of 
service is it? 

It must be such as will build up the body of 
Christ, which is a spiritual body, and so it must 
be spiritual service. 

To whom is this service to be rendered? 

It cannot be turned inward and rendered to the 
Church alone with no reference to those outside, 
for it would then be selfish and w^ould cease to be 
spiritual. It would therefore be incapable of build- 
ing up the body of Christ. It must be rendered 
not simply to those inside the Church, but especially 
to those outside. 

But what sort of spiritual service can be rendered 
to those outside the Church? 

It must be such a service as will meet their spir- 
itual needs. 

What are their spiritual needs? 

They are spiritually "dead in trespasses and sins," 
and so their one all-inclusive spiritual need while 
they are in that condition is life. 



lEph. 4:12-16. 



Scripture Exposition 21 

What sort of service will meet that need? 

Such service as will result in bringing them out 
of spiritual death into spiritual life. In the nature 
of the case, we can render them no other spiritual 
service until we have first rendered this one. Noth- 
ing of physical value can be done for those who 
are physically dead except to bring them to physical 
life, and it is equally impossible to do anything of 
spiritual value for those who are spiritually dead 
except to bring them to spiritual life. There must 
be spiritual life first, and then spiritual values will 
become real and tangible. 

What kind of service will result in bringing spir- 
itual hfe to the dead? 

The kind that brings to them him who was dead 
and is alive for evermore — him who is **the resur- 
rection and the life'' for all who are dead in tres- 
passes and sins, and that leads them to receive life 
by receiving him. 

What kind of service will do this? 

Witnessing to him who is the Lord of life, in 
such compelling earnestness and spiritual power 
as will induce the spiritually dead to receive the 
life he offers. 

Will this kind of service build up the body of 
Christ ? 

It is the only kind that will. For it is certainly 
the only service that will build up the Church in 
numbers, and it is also the only service that will 
produce real and lasting spiritual growth in the 
members. Other forms of service may temporarily 



22 Every -Member Evangelism 

stimulate a church to certain kinds of activity, but 
only the work of soul-winning will continuously 
build a church in real vitality. All over the land 
to-day there are churches that are practically pow- 
erless and fruitless because they are giving them- 
selves over to multiplied forms of service which are 
not a direct appeal to the lost to receive Christ. 
The church that makes that appeal its one great 
business is always prosperous and powerful, and its 
growth is both certain in numbers and symmetrical 
in spiritual character. 

It IS as plainly taught in this passage as language 
can make it that the Lord gave evangelists and 
pastors and teachers to his people to train and per- 
fect them in the work of soul-winning. Pastors 
and evangelists are not appointed to be the profes- 
sional soul-winners of the Church, but "for the 
perfecting of God's people in their appointed serv- 
ice" of witnessing and soul-winning. The pastor- 
ate is not a religious lectureship; it is a spiritual 
generalship. And an evangelist is not to go to a 
field and reap the harvest for a church w^hile they 
look on and watch him do it, but he is to lead, in- 
struct, and direct the harvesters as they go out into 
the field and gather in the harvest themselves. 

THE PASTOR AS AN OVERSEER 

There is another term in the New Testament 
that brings out this truth with great clearness. The 
Lord has said to all pastors through Paul, "Take 
heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, 



Scripture Exposition 23 

over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over- 
seers'''^ Thayer's Greek lexicon defines the word 
from which '"overseer" comes as, *'a man charged 
with the duty of seeing that things to be done by 
others are done rightly''; a "superintendent." 

The word also carries the meaning of watch-care 
and shepherding, as a shepherd feeds and cares for 
his flock. 

This defines the double work of the pastor. He 
is to feed his people and give them such watch-care 
as will make them strong and vigorous for their 
service of soul-winning, and he is to be their over- 
seer, or superintendent, in that service, seeing that 
they do that work and guiding them wherever they 
may need it, that they may do it successfully. 

This twofold function of the pastoral office also 
comes out in the list of Christ's gifts to his Church 
which we have been studying. After naming 
apostles, prophets and evangelists, he names the one 
who is to have direct and continuous charge of a 
local body of believers, and calls him a ''pastor and 
teacher." As a pastor, or shepherd, as that word 
means, he is to feed the people and give them such 
watchful care as shall keep them fit for their ap- 
pointed service ; as a teacher he is to give them not 
simply theoretical but especially practical instruction 
to the point of success in their appointed service. 

That the individual members may become suc- 
cessful in winning the lost is therefore the one all- 
inclusive reason why pastors were given to the 

*Acts 20:28. 



24 Every -Member Evangelism 

Church. The shepherding and the superintending 
both have that as their main object. 

THE pastor's main BUSINESS 

The conclusion is inevitable. The main business 
of the pastor is not the preparation and delivery of 
sermons and addresses so much as the development, 
whether by sermon or by any other method, of 
every member in his church into a soul-winner. 
His sermons — at least those to Christians — ought 
always to have this in view. 

Not that either the pastor or his people have no 
teaching ministry which it is possible to distin- 
guish from simple witnessing, but that all such 
ministry is to have preparation for soul-winning 
witnessing, rather than the simple impartation of 
instruction and information, as its ultimate object. 
Such witnessing to Christ as will bring the lost to 
him is the main stream of Christian service into 
which all other streams of Christian instruction and 
activity must be made to flow. Indeed, witnessing 
to Christ is the very essence of the building up 
ministry of the Word, for he who is the theme of 
the Word is the Bread of God by which we grow 
in grace and knowledge. And growth is both cer- 
tain and normal only when in the strength of that 
Bread we go out to the lost and give them also to 
eat. Food is for strength, and strength is for serv- 
ice, and if the strength we get from that Bread is 
not used in service, there will be little building up 
in the **most holy faith." In the teaching ministry 



Scripture Exposition 25 

of the pastor, therefore, he is to direct it all toward 
securing in his people ever-increasing results in 
soul-winning. 

One of the most practical as well as successful 
ways of doing this is the method a factory super- 
intendent would use with a beginner who knew 
little or nothing about his job. He would actually 
do the work and teach the beginner how. He would 
encourage him to do it himself, and help him in the 
uncertain places until he learned how. 

Precisely so the Lord has given every pastor to 
his Church that he may train the members in soul- 
winning, even to the point of going right out on to 
the field with them and doing it by their side, or 
helping them to do it until they learn how, using 
the skilled ones in turn to help train beginners, until 
there is a church full of skilled and successful soul- 
winners. 

No one can ever learn how to win the lost by 
studying books or listening to sermons and ad- 
dresses. He can fill his mind with the Word of 
God by study, as he certainly should do, and he 
can get suggestions from others as to how to deal 
with various classes of the lost, but when it comes 
to actually knowing how to win a soul to Christ, 
he can learn how only by going out into the field 
and doing it. 

WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL SERVICE? 

By this time some reader is asking if social serv- 
ice has no place in the work of the Church. 



26 Every -Member Evangelism 

That depends altogether on what is meant by 
social service. There is so much hazy and nebu- 
lous talk about it, even among social service ex- 
perts, that the only way to reach any satisfactory 
answer is to get back to the definitions of funda- 
mental things and then do a little analyzing. 

The Church is a distinct and unique gift of God 
to the world. It occupies a place in the world 
that nothing else can possibly occupy, and the 
Church itself can occupy the place of nothing else 
whatsoever. 

More than tv/o thousand years before the Church, 
God gave mankind human Government. Its place 
in the world is also unique and very definite, and 
it can neither let anything else come into its place, 
nor take the place of anything else. 

Each of these institutions has its own divinely 
given task to perform, and each one functions in 
its own distinct way. 

The mission of the state is to be a terror to evil- 
doers against human temporal welfare,^ and it func- 
tions, especially under democracy, through its cit- 
izenship. 

The mission of the Church is to proclaim for- 
giveness, through the blood of Christ, to sinners 
against God, and it functions through its member- 
ship. 

Now there are, broadly speaking, two distinct 
forms of human welfare work being advocated to- 
day under the one name of social service. Few if 

iGen. 9:5, 6. Rom. 13:1-7. 



Scripture Exposition 27 

any of its advocates seem to realize this, but the 
distinction can be seen at a glance as soon as atten- 
tion is called to it. 

There is the kind that has to do with equity, 
righteousness, and justice in human relationships. 
The official Social Service Program of the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, with 
its sixteen items, is an example. 

There is also the kind that has to do with the 
direct and immediate relief of human suffering, 
especially that caused by sickness, poverty, misfor- 
tune and like conditions. 

Now recall that the state is set in the world to 
be a terror to evildoers against temporal human 
welfare. How can it properly function and accom- 
plish this mission? It can do so only by the 
administration of equity, righteousness, and justice. 
This is precisely why God gave to Noah, earth's 
first divinely appointed governor, the sword of the 
magistrate, and instructed him to administer human 
government on the divine behalf, on the principles 
of justice and righteousness; and it is also why 
these same principles were reiterated and expanded 
in defining the functions of government in the 13th 
chapter of Romans. The first kind of social serv- 
ice named above is, therefore, the mission of the 
state alone, and the Church as such has no func- 
tions to perform in that realm. Every Christian as 
a citizen ought always to act on principles of right- 
eousness and equity toward his fellow-citizens, and 
to help his governmpnt to act on the same principles. 



28 Every- Member Evangelism 

but the Church as a corporate body has no mission in 
the sphere of officially seeking to get righteousness 
and equity administered. 

Recall again that the Church is set in the world 
to win the lost to Christ. Anything that will open 
the way for more effective witnessing to Christ is 
therefore not out of harmony with the mission of 
the Church, provided it has not already been dele- 
gated to the state as a matter of equity and justice. 
That kind of social service that is in the nature of 
philanthropy is, consequently, not out of place in 
the work of the Church, provided always that it is 
used as a direct and immediate means of opening 
the way for more effective witnessing to Christ 
than would otherwise be possible. And so the sec- 
ond kind of social service named above may prop- 
erly be included in the mission of the Church so 
long as it is used as a direct means of opening the 
way to soul-winning. The moment it descends to a 
mere sympathetic and humanitarian relief of human 
needj, with no reference to direct soul-winning 
work, it ceases to be a proper activity of the 
Church as such. 

'The poor always ye have with you" (John 
13:8), said Christ w^hen he was on earth, and he 
himself had great compassion for the sick and af- 
flicted. But you will notice that he only began at the 
blind man's eyes, the lame man's feet, and the deaf 
man's ears, and that then he kept on going, until he 
got to their sin and gave them forgiveness. Soul-win- 
ning witnessing to Christ is the only possible war- 



Scripture Exposition 29 

rant for even this kind of social service being done 
by the Church. Indeed, it is very striking, to say 
the least, that so far as example goes there is no 
New Testament v^arrant for philanthropic work 
by the Church in its corporate capacity except to 
those within the Church itself. 

There is one thing about social service of every 
kind that must never be forgotten. Like civiliza- 
tion and education, it is but the by-product of evan- 
gelism. Just as a by-product is impossible, there- 
fore, apart from the main product, so permanent 
civic and social betterment is utterly impossible 
apart from the winning of the lost to Christ. And 
as the only way to get more by-product is to pro- 
duce more of the main product, just so the only 
way to get an increase in any kind of social service 
whatever is to intensify the work of evangelism. 
And so those churches that are turning aside to 
social service as a program are doing the very thing 
that tends to kill all forms of social service from 
the earth. 

The main work of the whole Church in the whole 
world throughout the whole Age is witnessing to 
the salvation there is in Christ. Anything outside 
of this forfeits the promised presence and blessing 
of him who said, "Lo, I am with you all the days, 
even unto the consummation of the Age." (Matt. 
28:20 Gr.) 



CHAPTER II 
PRACTICAL APPLICATION 

WE have before us now the details of the 
divine Program, which Christ gave to his 
disciples before he went away, and which the Holy 
Spirit put into actual operation when he came. 

Can this ancient Program be given practical ap- 
plication and put into successful operation in the 
twentieth century? 

Absolutely ! 

Will it meet the complicated conditions, and func- 
tion in the ever-increasing maze of modern life? 

Nothing else but this Program will do so ! 

Will it cure the Church of her increasing ills, 
revitalize her message, and bring back the drifting 
masses to her ministry? 

This is the only Program that can do it ! 

For at the heart of this Program lies the one 
word *'Go!" and world-conditions can never become 
so complicated, nor the condition of the Church 
become so bad, that that command cannot be 
obeyed, when the Church yields to the power of 
the Holy Spirit, exactly as it was obeyed in the 
early days of Church history. 

When we begin to go in obedience to the divine 
command and in the fulness of the divine power, 
then the lost of the world will begin to come. We 

30 



Practical Application 31 

can never expect the world to come to us for the 
message; we must go to them with the message. 
And so in the nature of the case it must be indi- 
vidual work for individuals. 

/. We Must Go Individually 

If any further Scripture proof were needed to 
substantiate this, there is great abundance. 

Take the Great Commission itself. It is com- 
monly understood to mean, ''Come ye out of all the 
community into our church and hear the Gospel 
preached." But it reads instead, ''Go ye into all 
the world [your world, your community as well as 
all the earth], and preach the Gospel [proclaim the 
Good Tidings] to every creature!''^ 

There is no command in all the New Testament 
for a sinner to go to church after the Gospel, but 
there are multiplied commands for the Church to 
take the Gospel to the sinner. Of course it is cause 
for great rejoicing when the lost do come to church 
and hear the Gospel, but the responsibility of every 
Christian is not to bring the lost to the Gospel but 
to take the Gospel to the lost. 

Even the Old Testament anticipates the Great 
Commission when it exclaims, *'How beautiful upon 
the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth 
good tidings,"^ not "of them that bring the people 
to hear the Good Tidings." 

"Behold a sower went forth to sow"^ — forth into 
the field. The field will never come to us for the 



»Mark 16:15. 'Isaiah 52;7. »Matt. 13:3. 



32 Every -Member Evangelism 

seed, so we must take the seed to the field. The 
Christian is the sower, the Word of salvation is the 
seed, and the world is the field. Every Christian is 
to take the Gospel — the seed, to the lost in the 
world — the field. Just as a farmer, if he is ever 
to get a harvest, must sow his seed in the field and 
not stand on his own doorstep and sow his own 
door-yard knee-deep with wheat, so the Lord's 
people, if they expect to get a harvest, must take 
the seed of the Word out into the world and sow it 
in the field, and not do all their sowing in the door- 
yard of their own church services. 

^'Launch out into the deep, and let down your 
nets for a draught."^ The Lord has called us to 
be fishers of men, and if we are to take a great 
catch we must leave the shore and the baited hook 
and line and get out into deep water where the 
multitudes of fish are. We cannot build a finely 
appointed spiritual fishing station on a prominent 
corner, and then expect the fish to come hurrying 
in from everywhere to be caught, even when we put 
on a special fishing campaign. If we are to catch 
men for Christ we must go where they are. 

"Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that 
he will send forth labourers into his harvest,"^ that 
is, harvesters into the field. The Lord never com- 
manded us to pray for a harvest! But why not? 
Because the harvest is always white and ready 
to be gathered. But he did command us to pray for 
harvesters. The supreme and crying need is for 
harvesters to go out into the field after the harvest, 



ilvuke 5:4. ^^att. 9;38. 



Practical Application 33 

for the harvest will ne\'^r come in out of the field 
to be gathered. 

**He that goeth forth [into the field] and weepeth, 
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again 
with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with himf'^ He 
goes after the sheaves and brings them out of the 
field; they do not come to him. 

All this and much more like it forces upon us the 
conviction that the Lord's *'go" means GO! 

*'go" does not mean "send" 

Yet in spite of all this evidence, multiplied thou- 
sands of earnest Christians apply the *'go" in the 
Great Commission to Foreign Missions, with the 
possible inclusion of Home Missions and the work 
of the ministry. It never seems to dawn on them 
that it is an individual and personal command to 
themselves. And so because they are not providen- 
tially directed to give their whole lives to the min- 
istry or to missions, Home or Foreign, they imag- 
ine that the Lord's command is not to be obeyed 
except by proxy. 

And so we have the utterly unscriptural phrase, 
'^Either go or send some one in your place," which 
has helped multitudes to live in constant disobedi- 
ence to the Great Commission and still be in good 
conscience about it. 

The Lord never commanded us to either go or 
send some one else in our place. He commanded 
us to GO! 

And every Christian has a personal world into 

iPsa. 126:6. 
4 



34 Every -Member Evangelism 

which he is to go. It is our business to do the 
going. It is the Lord's prerogative to do the send- 
ing. "Whom shall / send, and who will go for 
usf''^ he inquires. No one can send another in his 
place. He can do nothing but go without living in 
disobedience. 

Right here is the reason why genuine heart inter- 
est in missions is so hard to arouse. Proxy wit- 
nessing in the place of personal witnessing will 
make practical interest in missions almost impos- 
sible. The one who is not going with the message 
of salvation into his own personal world will have 
but a sentimental interest in those who are going 
with the message into their own personal worlds. 

But once let a Christian become obedient and go 
with the Gospel into his own world, and he will be 
on fire with enthusiasm to co-operate, financially and 
in every other way, with those who need help to go 
into their personal worlds. Imagine a church full 
of soul-winners; do you think the active mission- 
ary interest would be confined to a small handful 
of women, and do you think it would be difficult 
to keep up the interest even among them ? A non- 
missionary church full of soul-winners is an im^ 
possibility! 

WE MUST TAKE CHRIST TO THE WORLD 

There is another utterly unscriptural phrase that 
has grown up out of this misconception of our 
Lord's command. The great majority of Chris- 

ilsaiah 6:8. 



Practical Application 35 

tians are trying to *'bring the world to Christ." But 
that is not what the Lord commanded. He told us 
to do the very opposite. He told us to take Christ 
to the world, "Ye shall be witnesses unto m^/"^ 
he said, and then he told us to take our testimony 
to him to every creature in all the world. We can- 
not bring the world to Christ. It will not come. 
The natural heart is enmity against God, and men 
in its power will refuse to come. But we can take 
Christ to the world and bear our testimony to him 
in such compelling power and persuasiveness as to 
overcome enmity and melt hearts into penitence and 
saving faith. 

Yes, this ancient Program can be put into suc- 
cessful operation in the twentieth century. The 
children of this world are reaching the people with 
their propositions, and the children of light can do 
the same thing. Merchants have no trouble in get- 
ting to the people. Milk dealers reach every cus- 
tomer daily. Salesmen of all sorts find a way of 
getting to us with their goods, while poHticians 
regularly organize so as to reach and influence if 
possible every last voter in a given territory. Every 
one is being reached and everything is being 
brought to the modern man — everything but the 
Gospel. And the Church can take the Gospel to 
every man, if Christ did not command an impos- 
sibility ! 

There is therefore but one thing for a Christian 
to do who wants to be obedient to his Lord, and 
that is to GO. 



»Acts 1:8. 



36 Every- Member Evangelism 

//. We Must Go Systematically 

A hit-or-miss method is sure to defeat us. There 
is certain to be confusion without a definite pro- 
gram to work to. Any business man w^ould regard 
it as the worst of follies to try to run a business 
without method. 

But we need not make our own program, for the 
Lord has made one for us. He has not only told 
us to go, but he has told us how to go. 

SYSTEMATIZING THE FIELD 

We are first to be systematic in the division of 
our field. 

When the Lord systematically divided the world- 
field into four districts and commanded the dis- 
ciples to bear the message simultaneously to Jeru- 
salem, Judaea, Samaria, and *'the uttermost part 
of the earth,"^ he gave us a definite Program by 
which every lesser field, down to the smallest, is to 
be systematized for the work of witnessing. We 
are authorized, not to say commanded, to divide the 
field in v/hich we are located, and into which we 
are to go with our testimony, into such districts as 
will enable us systematically to cover the whole 
field with our message. 

This is precisely what business men do. When 
a wholesale business is organized, they first deter- 
mine on a location most favorably situated with 
reference to the territory they propose to cover. 



lActs 1:8. 



Practical Application 37 

They next build a distributing center, having in 
mind practical usefulness in their business rather 
than ornamental beauty. Then they employ sales- 
men — ^personal workers — and assign them to spe- 
cific sections of that territory. And then they send 
them out in systematic fashion to dispose of their 
goods in those various sections, giving them every 
possible assistance in their work. 

Business men are keen enough to see that this is 
the only method by which any given territory can 
be covered. The Lord's people ought also to see 
that this is the only program by which the message 
can be carried to all the lost in their field. 

SYSTEMATIZING THE LABOR 

We are also to be systematic in the division of 
our labor. Just what this division should be has 
already been made perfectly clear to us in what the 
Holy Spirit did on the Day of Pentecost. He 
directed and empowered all the disciples in the 
work of private and informal witnessing, and then 
he selected and empowered one of the number to 
preach a sermon that became the climax of the 
previous witnessing. 

Public preaching, therefore, at least that which is 
directed toward the salvation of the lost, is evi- 
dently intended by the Holy Spirit to be the climax 
and culmination of the private witnessing that is to 
accompany it. Not that no climax is possible except 
in connection with public preaching. Far from it. 
But that public preaching, especially that which is 



38 Every- Member Evangelism 

to the lost, is not likely to bring a climax of de- 
cision unless it is accompanied by private witness- 
ing, prayer, and personal work. Many a decision 
for Christ is brought about by private testimony, 
but a sermon is not likely to bring decision unless 
it is accompanied by the private work of individual 
Christians. 

This is where many a pastor fails. Christian 
people will go out of a service saying they cannot 
possibly understand how it is that the lost do not 
yield under such preaching as their pastor does. 
But the reason is very simple. A sermon to the 
lost is to be the climax of something that has pre- 
ceded, and if that something has not preceded there 
is not likely to be any climax, no matter how earn- 
est the appeal of the preacher. The pastor has 
failed simply because the people have failed be- 
hind him. If we do not systematize our witnessing 
and carry out the Program the Holy Spirit has laid 
down for us we must expect defeat and failure in 
our work. 

This Program is very simple, perfectly definite, 
thoroughly practical, and easily operated, and when 
it is actually followed, it always gets results. It is 
just as easily followed in the twentieth century as 
is was in the first, and the Church would be just as 
victorious to-day as the early Church was if she 
would follow this divine Program. 

A remarkable illustration as well as proof of this 
occurred more than a generation ago, in Valparaiso, 
Indiana, when it was a small city of about 4,000, 



Practical Application 39 

including the country population adjacent.^ There 
were in that population less than seven hundred 
church-members, and at least 1,500 old enough to 
be Christians who never went inside a church door. 

The Rev. M. T. Lamb, the Baptist pastor, with 
his little church of a hundred members, began meet- 
ings, meantime making desperate efiforts to get some 
one to come and do the preaching, but failing every- 
where. 

The pastor did the preaching, therefore, and the 
meetings continued three weeks without the slight- 
est interest among the unsaved. Of the 1,500 or 
more of them in the city, not one was coming. 

Finally they were able to secure a young stone- 
mason from Chicago, whose uncouth appearance 
and foreign accent were much against him, but 
who was a consecrated personal worker. 

Taking one of the deacons with him, he started 
out calling at every house, insisting on seeing every 
one, servants and all, and in each home gave a 
tender, earnest exhortation, had prayer where de- 
sirable, and left with an invitation to the meetings. 

Within three or four days others began doing the 
same work, and before the meetings closed a large 
number, including many of the converts, were doing 
this house-to-house work. 

The results were immediate. On the first night 
after the house-to-house personal work began, there 
were several new faces in the Baptist meetings, 
within a week the house was full and nearly a 



1 Story condensed from "Won by One," M. T. Ivamb, pub. by 
F. M. Barton, Cleveland, O. 



40 Every -Member Evangelism 

dozen had requested prayer, and within a short 
time the Methodists, who were also in meetings, 
had a house full, and the Presbyterians were com- 
pelled to start meetings, and they soon had a house 
full. 

Before the meetings closed, every unsaved soul 
in Valparaiso had had the Gospel most earnestly 
presented to him at least two or three times, result- 
ing in hundreds of them receiving Christ. 

Now note just what they had done. They had 
systematized both the field and the labor, and had 
followed the divine Program according to instruc- 
tions. They had turned the field into one big dis- 
trict and had gone systematically to every house in 
the city and carried the Gospel to the lost. They 
had witnessed in a private, informal way in every 
home, and the Gospel had been preached in a public, 
formal way every night in three churches. And 
that program had worked! The Lord's Programs 
always work! When he makes a Program, he 
makes the kind that will work! 

But the Church is not following this Program 
to-day. There is a reason. We will seek to find it. 



CHAPTER III 
SATANIC OPPOSITION 

THE divine Program worked too well to suit 
Satan. It worked so well at the beginning of 
the Age that it took him well nigh two hundred 
years to work any hindrance to it. It worked so 
well that if he had not fought it with a substitute 
program, he could have retained at most but a 
small following among earth's millions. So delay 
it he must, and delay it he finally did. We shall 
seek to find out how. 

/. How Satan Hindered the Divine Program 

The one thing, aside from the divine power, that 
made the program such a sweeping success was 
that every disciple was a witness; they were all 
propagandists. It was right here that Satan struck 
his blow. 

The first thing he did was so to. over-emphasize 
the distinctions in the divinely appointed division 
of service as finally to get an entirely equal wit- 
nessing brotherhood divided into two companies, 
with the great majority in one, and the small mi- 
nority in the other. The small company came to be 
called "clergy,'' and the large company "laity." 
And then he worked the witnessing out of the 
hands of the "laity," until it was finally regarded 

41 



42 Every -Member Evangelism 

as the exclusive right of the ''clergy/' Then came 
the DeviFs Millennium which history calls the Dark 
Ages! 

THE BLOW THAT STUNNED THE CHURCH 

This was the most terrific blow Satan ever dealt 
the Church, and one from which she has never 
recovered. It stunned the Church and all but killed 
her, and although the Reformation gave some 
promise of returning health and vigor, yet the 
recovery of her normal functions was only partial, 
and she is to-day slowly but surely losing out to 
the powers of darkness. 

The fact is that there are multitudes in the 
Church to-day who are still living in the Dark 
Ages, at least so far as obedience to the Great 
Commission is concerned. Some of the most ear- 
nest of those who may read these pages will reach 
this point with a feeling of amazement and per- 
plexity. They have always supposed that carry- 
ing the Gospel to the unsaved is precisely what the 
pastor is for. Of course it is cause for rejoicing 
if the church has a few officials and perhaps some 
others who are ''gifted in that direction" and "in- 
terested in that kind of work," who will supple- 
ment the pastor's personal work, but that every 
Christian is commanded to take the Gospel to all 
the unsaved who will not come to church after it 
never seems to have entered their minds. And 
when such a thing is suggested they are ready to 
ask, Why did the pastor enter the ministry if it 



Satanic Opposition 43 

was not to give his life to soul-winning? Why all 
those years of preparation if it was not to become 
expert in preaching and personal work for the 
reaching of the lost? Why does the church "em- 
ploy'' him and "pay him a salary," if he is not to 
give his whole life to proclaiming the Gospel, in 
public and from house to house, and winning souls 
to Christ and bringing them into the Church, while 
the members support and encourage him in his 
work? 

A PROGRAM THAT INSURES FAILURE 

If these questions are in your mind, stop and 
think a minute. No wholesale house could ever be 
run on such a program, and no more can the 
Church of the living God! Suppose it should be 
considered the duty of the sales manager, in har- 
mony with that program, to go out and do all the 
selling, with a little help, perhaps, from a few 
officers of the company or members of the firm, 
while the salesmen support him by their encourage- 
ment and their faithful attendance on his weekly 
lectures on the quality and value of their goods. 
And suppose the salesmen simply go out into the 
territory through the week to try to persuade a few 
pro3pective customers to come to those weekly lec- 
tures in the hope that they will decide to buy, while 
they themselves make little or no attempt to sell 
any goods, but simply seek to interest possible cus- 
tomers in the fine lectures of the sales manager. 
How long do you think that house would last? 



44 Every -AI ember Evangelism 

Just about long enough to exhaust the capital! 
And the fact that the Church has not gone to the 
wall for good on such a program is certain proof 
that it is a divine institution! Indeed, it was pre- 
cisely that program that all but killed the Church 
during the Dark Ages. 

THE PASTOR NOT A HIRED MAN 

Think again a minute. The pastor is not *'em- 
ployed" by a church, for he is not the church's 
*'hired man." He is ^'employed" by God, the 
Owner of the business, and taken care of out of 
his own treasury, the funds in which are adminis- 
tered by the church. No pastor is ever "paid a 
salary" out of the pockets of the people while he 
does their witnessing and soul-winning work for 
them; he is given a ^'support" out of the treasury 
of the Lord, while he gives his whole time ^.o the 
perfecting of the members in the art of witnessing 
and soul-winning. 

At a Monday morning ministers' meeting, the 
writer heard a prominent pastor tell the incident 
that he once called on a church officer to lead in 
prayer at a prayer-meeting, and the man retorted, 
*Tray yourself! What do we hire you for?" And 
you who read these lines may be saying to your 
pastor, in attitude if not in words, ''Win the lost 
to Christ yourself ! What do we hire you for ?" 

When men are struggling and going down in the 
waves of sin, the pastor is not the whole life-sav- 
ing crew ! There was a terrible v\^reck off the coast 



Satanic Opposition 45 

of Italy. The captain of the life-saving crew, in- 
stead of manning the life-boat, stood on shore and 
shouted instructions through a trumpet to the 
drowning sailors. The report that went to the gov- 
ernment said, "We rendered what assistance we 
could through the speaking trumpet, but the next 
morning there were twenty bodies washed ashore/' 
And the church that uses its pastor as its 
speaking trumpet, and fails to man the life-boats 
with the entire crew and push out to save the lost 
who are going down, will be responsible for a great 
company who will one day be thrown up on the 
shores of a Christless eternity who might have 
been saved if the Lord's people had gone after 
them. 

SATAN BEHIND OUR FAILURE 

Satan is behind this misconception of the Great 
Commission. Multitudes of most earnest Chris- 
tians never dream that they have been put into the 
list of disobedient disciples by accepting one of 
Satan's sophistries, but it is true. He has always 
used every possible means to close the mouths of 
Christian witnesses, for he is overcome *'by the 
blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testi- 
nnony/''^ And so he is only too glad to see us busy 
in all sorts of "church work," so long as he can get 
us to stop short of soul-winning work. He will be 
willing to see us take an active interest even in 
Home and Foreign Missions, and even occupy offi- 



»Rev. 12:11. 



46 Every -Member Evangelism 

cial positions in that work, provided he can keep 
us too busy to do any soul-winning work ourselves. 

A Missionary Secretary wrote a confession to the 
Missionary Review of the World. She said: *1 
was helping to get up a big convention, and was 
full of enthusiasm over making the session a suc- 
cess. On the opening day my aged father, who 
came as a delegate to the convention, sat with me 
at luncheon at the hotel. He listened sympathet- 
ically to my glowing accounts of the great features 
that were to be. When I paused for breath, he 
leaned towards me and said, while his eye followed 
the stately movements of the head waiter, 'Daugh- 
ter, I think that big head waiter over there is going 
to accept Jesus Christ. I've been talking to him 
about his soul.' I almost gasped. I had been too 
busy planning for a great missionary convention. 
I had no time to think of the soul of the head 
waiter. 

"When we went out to my apartment, a Negro 
man was washing the apartment windows. Jim 
was honest and trustworthy, and had been a most 
satisfactory helper in my home. Only a few mo- 
ments passed before I heard my father talking 
earnestly with Jim about his personal salvation, and 
a swift accusation went to my heart as I realized 
that I had known Jim for years and had never said 
a word to him of salvation. 

''A carpenter came in to repair a door. I awaited 
his going with impatience to sign his work ticket, 
for my ardent soul longed to be back at my mis- 



Satanic Opposition. 47 

sionary task Even as I waited I heard my father 
talking with the man about the door he had just 
fixed, and then simply and naturally leading the 
conversation to the only door into the Kingdom of 
God. 

"A Jew lives across the street. I had thought 
that possibly I would call on the folks who lived 
in the neighborhood — some time — but I had my 
hands so full of my missionary work the calls had 
never been made, but, as they met on the street, 
my father talked with my neighbor of the only 
Saviour of the world. 

"A friend took us out to ride. I waited for my 
father to get into the car, but in a moment he was 
up beside the chauffeur, and in a few minutes I 
heard him talking earnestly with the man about the 
way of salvation. When we reached home he said, 
*You know I was afraid I might never have another 
chance to speak to the man.' 

"The wife of a prominent railway man took him 
out to ride in her elegant limousine. *I am glad 
she asked me to go,' he said, *for it gave me an 
opportunity of talking with her about her salvation. 
I think no one had ever talked with her before.' 

**Yet these opportunities had come to me also and 
had passed by as ships in the night, while I strained 
my eyes to catch sight of a larger sail on a more 
distant horizon. I could but question my own heart 
whether my passion was for souls or success in 
getting up conventions." 

Here is the vital difference betv/een sentimental 



48 Every -Member Evangelism 

and practical interest in missions. No matter how 
much enthusiasm we show in talking and planning 
missionary work, if we haven't enough interest in 
the African, or the Jap, or the Italian who does our 
work to make the first atteqipt to lead him to a 
saving faith in Christ, our interest in missions is 
nothing but sentiment, and it scarcely touches the 
fringes of Satan's soul-destroying work. 

Just so long, therefore, as the conception prevails 
that the pastor is to do the active soul-winning work 
of the church, and just so long as the most earnest 
members of the church stop short of actual and 
definite personal efforts to bring Christ to lost men 
and women, just so long will the great enemy of 
Christ and his Church prevail. It is high time the 
Church stopped working by Satan's program ! 

//. How Satan Keeps the Divine Program Hin^ 
dered 

Satan keeps the divine Program hindered by 
keeping his own program in operation. Through 
its means he has the Church by the throat, and is 
strangling the life out of her by shutting off the 
breath of her universal testimony. He is doing this 
in unnumbered ways, for he fears universal testi- 
mony to the saving grace of God more than any 
other one thing. Anything to keep Christians still, 
is the one main track on which all his opposition 
to the Church is run. 



Satanic Opposition 49 

ENTANGLED IN WORLDLINESS 

He entangles Christians in the plans and pleas- 
ures of the worldly and godless crowd, and thus 
shuts off their personal testimony and kills the pub- 
lic testimony of the preacher. For the lost hear 
the preacher say that when we are saved all the 
old things will pass away and all things will be- 
come new ; and then they look at the worldly church- 
member and see all the old things and nothing new 
in his life, and conclude that what the preacher has 
said is a beautiful theory that doesn't work, and go 
right on in their service of Satan. 

THE ^'church''' will DO IT 

Then Satan fosters the impression that upon a 
certain organic body of people called "the church'' 
rests the responsibility of soul-winning, and that 
if each member does his share of *'church work," 
Christ will somehow be brought to the lost by "the 
church." But the truth is, the ministry of taking 
the Gospel to every creature was never committed 
to the Church, much less to the "clergy." It was 
committed to the individuals composing the Church, 
Witnessing to Christ is a personal not an organic 
ministry. 

MISCONCEPTION OF THE MINISTRY 

Another device of Satan is to give the pastors 
themselves the conception that the pastorate is a 
religious lectureship rather than a soul-winning gen- 



50 Every- Member Evangelism 

eralship. And so it comes to pass that instead of 
doing the work of an overseer or superintendent, 
and actually leading and instructing the members in 
the work of soul- winning, they try to get the re- 
sults they are after by their pulpit work. 

This is why many pastors fail to experience any- 
thing like adequate results in their work. They fail 
because the church is failing behind them ; and the 
church is failing because the pastor, in turn, has 
not led them out in that work which alone will make 
his work succeed. And perhaps behind the pastor 
is a Theological Seminary that has failed to in- 
struct him in his main responsibility to the flock 
of God. And Satan's skilful manipulation is behind 
all these failures. For wherever you see a church 
diverted from the one work of soul-winning, you 
may be sure Satan has had his hand in things some- 
where. 

HOW '^CHURCH WORK^^ HINDERS 

Again, Satan works into church life and activity 
a multitude of things that need badly enough to 
be done, but which it is not the business of the 
Church to do, and thus steals away both time and 
service from the most earnest and consecrated of 
the members, who are the very ones who would be 
the first to take the Gospel to the lost if they were 
not entangled in these multiplied forms of "church 
work.'' So many societies and organizations, with 
objects that are worthy, but that do not belong in 
the work of the Church as such, are besieging the 



Satanic Opposition 51 

Church for recognition and co-operation to-day that 
the average church would have no time left for her 
own work if any attention were to be given to these 
multiplied calls. 

WITNESSING THAT FAILS 

Another successful method of Satan's is to give 
those earnest Christians who are anxious to wit- 
ness something else to witness to beside Christ. 
Many churches have a little company of faithful 
people who are constantly witnessing to the ^splendid 
sermons or the fine personality of their pastor, the 
crowds that attend the services, the fine singing, 
the splendid sociability, and a lot of other delight- 
ful things connected with their church, but they 
are not going everywhere witnessing to Christ. 
Some of them are very intelligent about the history 
and doctrines of their denomination, and can enter- 
tain you by the hour with most informing discourse 
upon them, but when it comes to such testimony 
to Christ and his redeeming power as will bring 
a sinning soul to a saving knowledge of him, they 
are doing none of that kind of witnessing. And 
so their churches are dragging through weary 
months with scarcely a soul brought to receive 
Christ, while a great harvest is going to eternal 
ruin all around them for the want of harvesters. 
The only kind of witnessing for which the Holy 
Spirit will ever empower a Christian is witnessing 
to Christ. Witnessing of every other kind is power- 
less to save. Satan knows this, and this is why he 



52 Every- Member Evangelism 

influences earnest Christians who want to witness 
into testimony to everything and everybody except 
Christ and his saving grace, and closes their mouths 
about him. 

THE '"gO-TO-CHURCH^^ METHOD 

Among the most successful weapons which Satan 
uses against the Church is the all but universal 
notion that it is the responsibility of the lost to go 
after the Gospel. And so almost the entire evangel- 
istic effort of Christians everywhere exhausts it- 
self in trying to get the lost to go to church. Our 
*'Go-to-church'' campaigns are based upon this very 
notion, and practically every evangelistic campaign 
is an attempt to induce the lost to "go-to-church" 
to hear the great singing and the imported preacher, 
in the hope that they may possibly accept Christ 
under the impulse of the service. 

The result is inevitable. In the average revival 
campaign held in a single church, the fifty or hun- 
dred unsaved Sunday-school scholars, and the 
twenty-five or fifty unsaved relatives and friends 
of the members are reached, with possibly a few 
strangers, while the great throngs of unsaved are 
left utterly untouched to drift into a Christless 
eternity, where they will forever wail out the awful 
accusation, ''No man cared enough for my soul to 
bring me the Good News of salvation." And in 
even the greatest and most successful tabernacle 
campaigns, only a pitifully small fraction of the un- 
saved are ever reached, while the churches slip 



Satanic Opposition 53 

back into their criminal neglect of the lost almost 
as soon as the meetings close, hoping that a few un- 
saved will come after the Gospel and accept it while 
they wait for the next go-to-church evangelistic 
campaign to come. 

A Socialist said at a meeting of his followers, 
*'The present policy of the Church is this: 'You 
may come here and get God's message and go to 
heaven, or you may stay away and go to hell !' " 
Is this the truth, or is it a libel? 

In an Ohio city of 135,000, in which there were 
more than 50,000 old enough to be saved who were 
without Christ, a six weeks' tabernacle meeting, led 
by one of the most capable and widely sought pas- 
tor-evangelists in the land and co-operated in most 
heartily by more than fifty churches, resulted in 
reaching about 1,200. This was cause for great re- 
joicing, but what did the churches do for the 49,000 
others who were still out of Christ? Just what 
churches everywhere do — nothing! They had spared 
neither labor nor expense to give the lost of their 
city the chance of their lives to come after the 
Gospel and be saved. What more could they do? 
They had done their utmost to get the sheaves to 
come in out of the field and be harvested ; to get the 
fish to come to shore and be caught; to get the 
dead to come after life ; and if 49,000 of them still 
insisted on staying away, weren't the churches help- 
less to do any more ? What more should they have 
done? 

If this is the attitude of the great majority of 



54 Every -^Member Evangelism 

our churches to-day — and it is, then the Socialist 
was right. The present policy of depending on the 
pastor for almost the entire soul-winning work of 
the church must inevitably make just the impres- 
sion on' people that was expressed by the Socialist. 
The pastor can never do this work. There aren't 
enough of him. It is an absolute physical impos- 
sibility. The Rev. R. H. Claney says: "If Christ 
had started on the day of his baptism to preach in 
the villages of India and had continued up to the 
present, visiting one village each day, healing the 
sick and proclaiming the Gospel, he would still have 
left unvisited 30,000 villages in India." This illus- 
trates in some measure the inability of the pastor 
to get the Gospel to all the lost, especially in a 
crowded city field, before they are forever beyond 
his reach. 

The pastor cannot average more than ten hours 
a week in house-to-house work. Now^ suppose a 
hundred members of his church should average one 
hour a week in this work. This would mean that 
they were together giving as much time to that work 
in one week as he could give in ten, to say nothing 
of the added emphasis that would be given to a 
testimony coming from 'laymen.'' 

This policy of the Church is one reason why the 
pastor fails. And it is why the evangelist fails. 
And it is why the Church herself is going increas- 
ingly to fail until she gets back to first century 
obedience to the Great Commission. 

]\Iany have been praying for years for a great. 



Satanic Opposition 55 

world-wide revival. When the Church gets back to 
literal obedience to the Great Commission the 
answer will come ! The harvest is dead-ripe and 
ready to be harvested, while the harvesters are sit- 
ting in the storehouse and wondering why it doesn't 
come in ! The harvest can be gathered as soon as 
the harvesters go into the field after it ! 

HOW SATAN USES CHRIST's PROGRAM 

Satan knows the value of the Lord's Program 
for his people, and so while he is doing his infernal 
best to keep us from working to it, he is most dili- 
gently using it in his own destructive work. 

Every adherent of a false faith is a propagandist, 
especially in those cults that are spreading most 
rapidly. 

When D. L. Moody was within forty miles of 
Salt Lake City on his way there to hold meetings, 
the engineer came back into the train and gave him 
an invitation to ride in the engine. The invitation 
was accepted, and that engineer tried through the 
entire forty-mile ride to convert D. L. Moody to 
Mormonism ! 

The one thing that accounts for the spread of 
Christian Science in spite of all the opposition to 
it is that every Eddyite is a personal worker and 
a propagandist. 

And look at Mohammedanism. Dan Crawford 
says that the one reason it has captured one-eighth 
of the world's population is because of its *'all-at- 
it" program. 'Trom Morocco to Zanzibar," he 



56 Every -Member Evangelism 

sa3^s, ''from Sierra Leone to Siberia and China, 
from Bosnia to New Guinea has witnessed the suc- 
cess of the all-at-it method." 

THE AWFUL RESULTS 

Perhaps the most tragic and heart-breaking feat- 
ure of the failure of Christians to take the Gospel 
to the lost is the occasional inside glimpse of the 
awful results. 

A pastor was passing a big department store, and 
followed a sudden impulse to go in and talk to the 
proprietor on the subject of his salvation. Finding 
him, he said : *'Mr. T., Fve talked beds and carpets 
and bookcases with you, but IVe never talked my 
business with you. Would you give me a few min- 
utes to do so?" Being led to the private office, the 
minister took out his New Testament and showed 
him passage after passage which brought before that 
business man his duty to accept Jesus Christ. Finally 
the tears began to roll down his cheeks, and he 
said to the pastor, "Fm seventy years of age. I 
was born in this city, and more than a hundred 
ministers, and more than five hundred church offi- 
cers, have known me as you have, to do business 
with, but in all those years you are the only man 
who ever spoke to me about my soul.'' 

A trustee in an important church in Pennsylvania 
told the writer that he attended all the services of 
that church for twenty years, the people knowing 
all the time that he was not a Christian, and no one 
in all that time, not even the pastor ^ ever said one 



Satanic Opposition 57 

word to him about receiving Christ. Finally becom- 
ing alarmed for fear no one would ever approach 
him on the subject, he hunted up some one him- 
self who could tell him how to accept Christ. 

When Wu Ting Fang was Chinese Ambassador 
to this country, he spoke in many places through- 
out the land, and always praised Confucianism as 
being far above Christianity. After closing his am- 
bassadorship, he spent his last Sunday in this coun- 
try in New York City. The Rev. Huie Kin, a Chris- 
tian Chinese pastor in the city, telephoned Mr. Wu 
at his hotel and asked him to attend church service. 
Mr. Wu said to the pastor: ''When I was a boy 
in China I was acquainted with some Christian 
people and thought highly of Christianity. I had 
never identified myself with it, but when I was ap- 
pointed to America, I decided that I wanted to throw 
in my lot with Christian people there, and made 
up my mind that I would accept the first invitation 
which was given me to attend a Christian service." 
Then after a moment's pause, he said: 'This is 
the first invitation I have had!" 

It has been stated that Leon Trotzky was within 
easy reach of, if not in frequent contact with, many 
Christians in New York in his youth and young 
manhood, but that no one ever attempted to win 
him for Christ. And look at the result ! 

A certain farmer walked to church every Sun- 
day past a neglected home. In that home was a 
boy whom he never even asked to attend Sunday- 



58 Every- Member Evangelism 

school. That boy was Joe Smith, the leader of 
the Mormon church. 

'If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from 
his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; 
but his blood shall I require at thine hand/'^ 



»Ezek. 33:8. 



Part II 
THE DIVINE PURPOSE 



INTRODUCTORY 

WHEN the Lord gave his people the Program 
of work we have been considering he thereby 
eliminated all other programs whatsoever. 

In choosing just this method of work rather than 
some other he must have had some definite purpose 
in view. 

What his entire purpose was we shall never know 
here, but some of the reasons for giving us that 
method of work lie right on the surface, and by as 
much as we are able to recognize them, therefore, by 
that much shall we be in fellowship with his purpose. 

There are at least two things that lie in his pur- 
pose about which there can be no question. One is 
that this Program is the only method of work that 
will save the Church. The other is that it is the only 
method that will reach the lost. For these reasons 
at least, then, he gave us the Program he did. 

We will therefore consider in this portion of our 
study of the Great Commission these two elements 
that lie in the divine Purpose. 



50 



CHAPTER I 
THIS PROGRAM WILL SAVE THE CHURCH 

A CHRISTIAN is one who has become spirit- 
ually alive from the dead. The presence of 
spiritual life within him is the one fundamental 
Ihing that distinguishes him from the unregenerate 
world about him. 

WHAT SPIRITUAL LIFE IS 

This spiritual life is not native to us, nor can it 
be developed out of anything we have or are by 
nature. It must be given to us. So God has given 
us eternal life, "and this life is in His Son," through 
whose possession of us when we believed on him 
we were born from above ; "not of blood, nor of the 
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of 
God f^ by which we have become a "new creation"^ 
in Christ, being thereby made "partakers of the 
divine nature."^ 

The life of a Christian, therefore, is the life of 
Christ within us through the Holy Spirit. It is 
not a life similar to his, it is his life. This is shown 
by the fact that what we receive in the new birth 
is not only "everlasting life," but also "eternal life," 
which is far more than "everlasting life." For 
while everlasting life has no end, yet it may have 

ijohn 1:13. ^2 Cor. 5:17 (Gr.). *2 Peter 1:4. 

6o 



This Program Will Save the Church 61 

a beginning; but eternal life has neither beginning 
nor end. 

Now the Triune God is the only one in the uni- 
verse who has eternal life. The only way he can 
give us eternal life, therefore, is to possess us with 
his own life, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit. 
This is one thing Paul meant when he said, *To 
me to live is Christ/'^ This is a mystery that is 
too high for us. We can none of us understand it; 
but we can believe it. 

LIFE MUST EXPRESS ITSELF 

Now Hfe, of whatever kind, must manifest itself. 
Wherever life is present and in normal condition, 
it must act. 

Moreover, all Hfe of every kind must express 
itself according to its nature, it must act in conform- 
ity with its own type. Physical life will express 
itself physically, mental Hfe, mentally, and spiritual 
life, spiritually. And spiritual means far more than 
moral. A man may be splendidly moral without 
any relation to spiritual things whatever. All 
spiritual activity has to do with direct and vital con- 
nection with God, his Word, his Son, his people, 
his work for a lost world. 

Wherever the life of God is present and unhin- 
dered, therefore, it must and will act in perfect har- 
mony with his nature. If this is not certain, noth- 
ing can be. 

The conclusion is that if the Hfe of Christ is in 



»PhU. 1:21. 



62 Every -Member Evangelism 

a man it must express itself, for it will be in him 
**a well of water springing up'' ; bubbling over. So 
long as conditions are normal it cannot be kept 
down. 

And also, this upspringing and bubbling-over life 
of Christ in a man will make him prefer to think, 
say, and do those things that are perfectly normal 
to the life of Christ himself. 

If we can find out, therefore, what things are 
normal to the life of Christ, we shall also have 
learned what the normal Christian life is. 

LIFE IS EXPRESSED IN LOVE 

"God is love/'^ Love lies at the heart of God's 
nature, and is the normal expression of every out- 
going of his being toward others. And so love will 
and must be the normal expression of the life of 
Christ in the believer, or in other words, of the 
Christian Life. 

Then if we can find out what his love prompts 
him to do in himself, we shall know what his love 
will seek to do through us when his life possesses 
us. Think carefully for a moment. 

Love is the spontaneous outgoing of the whole 
life and being on behalf of others. It is the very 
nature of love to give. It is self-giwing. **God so 
loved the world that He gave"^ himself in his Son, 
who was "God manifest in the flesh."^ 

This accounts not only for the fact that Christ 
came into the world, but shows why he came. He 



11 John 4:8. 2john 3:16. ^ Tim. 3:16. 



This Program Will Save the Church 63 

came to give himself; and he gave himself as a ran- 
som, that whosoever accepted his gift ^'should not 
perish, but have eternal life."^ **The Son of man 
is come to seek and to save that which was lost,"^ 
and in doing so he gave up, and laid down, and let 
go, until there was nothing left to let go of but his 
life, and then he gave that up that those dead in 
trespasses and sins might live through him. This 
is what love prompted him to do. 

Then he said to his disciples, "As my Father hath 
sent me, even so send I you.''^ And so as he was 
sent to give up his life, we are sent to do the same 
thing, though not in the same way. He gave his life 
up in death ; we are to give ours up in service. His 
»was a dying sacrifice ; ours is to be *'a living sacri- 
fice.'* So he tells us to make everything else second- 
ary and contributory and "go ye into all the world, 
and proclaim the Good News to every creature."^ 

LOVE IS EXPRESSED IN SOUL-WINNING 

If a man is really a Christian, therefore, the in- 
dwelling life and constraining love of Christ will 
impel him to go out into all his portion of the world 
and seek the lost for Christ, and this will be the 
normal activity and the main business of his life. 
For what the love of God was and did through 
Christ when he was among men, it will also be and 
do through Christians while they are among men. 
The life of God must act, if it is in us, and it must 
act according to its nature. And so true Christians 

ijohn 3;15. ^j^^uke 19:10. sjohn 20;21. 4Mark 16;15. 



64 Every -Member Evangelism 

who are in normal spiritual health will give their 
lives in seeking the lost, using whatever secular 
pursuits they are in to pay expenses, while the main 
line business of their lives will be the same as it 
was with Christ. 

The conclusion of all this is inevitable. Christ's 
Program of every-member evangelism is the only 
thing that will save the Church, The reason is that 
constant soul- winning activity on the part of every 
Christian is the life of Christ in us normally ex- 
pressed, and will therefore keep the Church in vig- 
orous health; while ceasing the wojk of soul-win- 
ning means the life of Christ abnormally suppressed 
in all who do not engage in it, and by that much 
heads the Church toward certain death. Normal 
exercise of the life that is in us means vigor, and 
strength, and abounding vitality ; while suppression 
of normal activity and lack of exercise, means in- 
creasing ill health, and heads us in the direction of 
death. 

Now there are two features of the present con- 
dition of the Church that need most serious at- 
tention. One is the present increasing decline which 
is becoming an alarming drift toward death, and 
the other is the imperative call for revival and the 
renewal of vigorous health. 

7. The Present Decline 

The present condition of the Church, both in 
numerical and spiritual strength, is cause for serious 
apprehension, to say the least. 



This Program Will Save the Church 65 

There is an increasingly small fraction of pro- 
fessed Christians who ever make any personal ef- 
fort whatever to win a lost soul to Christ, and com- 
paratively few even of the most earnest of them 
ever do much of that work except during the short 
period of the year when evangelistic meetings are 
on. And even then the efforts of most of them are 
put forth largely to get the lost to church, with little 
or no direct effort to get them to receive Christ. Ask 
even some of the most active to sit down by an in- 
quirer, open up the way of salvation, and lead him 
into an assurance of acceptance through faith, and 
they are practically helpless. And as for soul- 
winners who are always at it wherever they are, — 
well, the most of us never met a person of that kind. 

At the Northern Baptist Convention in Atlantic 
City in 1918, Dr. Emory W. Hunt, in speaking of 
how the Church is neglecting its real task, said: 
*'It does sadly neglect the very class to seek which 
its Master sent it: the unchurched masses. I am 
quite aware that such a broad statement will at 
once challenge an indignant reply from the church 
which is innocently unconscious in this neglect. To 
be sure, the preacher is constantly voicing the wide 
invitation that 'whosoever will may come,' and oc- 
casionally hints that every one needs to come. Just 
about enough individuals out of the great mass of 
humanity are responding to its feeble invitation to 
quiet the conscience of the Church, to recruit its 
wasted numbers, and to continue its existence. But 
the Church has not even faced the question why its 

6 



(^(y Every -Member Evangelism 

appeal is not more persuasive. It is not unfair to 
say that the average church is content to maintain 
services and to save its own life. With such a mes- 
sage as the Church has to give, and with so pitiful 
a need of it as this weary world feels, the best 
thought and purpose of the Church ought to be 
given to the question of how to bring these two to- 
gether, and of what the misjudgments are which 
keep them apart." 

Ah, yes ! ''Such a message" ; "so pitiful a need" ; 
**how to bring these two together." There is only 
one way, and that is to give the Lordship of Christ 
practical acknowledgment by a literal obedience to 
the Great Commission. 

But we are increasingly disobedient to that com- 
mand, and the result is, the Church is dying. 

1. Look at the Numerical Decline 

Figures may mean much or little, of course, but 
here are a few that at least indicate that the direc- 
tion of the present movement in the Church is 
toward death. 

Up to the beginning of this century the Church 
in America was gaining faster than the population. 
In 1800, there were ten church-members out of 
every 145 inhabitants. In 1900, it was ten out of 
every 45. But the increase steadily slowed up 
toward the end of the century, until from 1900 to 
1910 the gain in the Church, according to Dr. Josiah 
Strong, barely kept pace with the percentage of gain 
in the population, while from 1910 to 1914 the 



This Program Will Save the Church 67 



fe 



slowing-up process continued and indeed became 
more serious.^ And during the war the Church lost 
out at such an alarmingly increasing rate that the 
figures of Dr. H. K. Carroll, pubHshed in 1920 for 
the previous year, give the Methodists, North and 
South, a net loss of 86,000, the Presbyterians 
41,000, the Disciples 17,000, and the Northern Bap- 
tists 9,000, with only the Southern Baptists show- 
ing a net gain, which was 32,000. The fact is, 
therefore, that the war seems simply to have accel- 
erated what was already going on throughout 
Christendom. Rather large gains are reported for 
the past two years, but the figures are not nearly as 
encouraging as they appear to be, when the gain in 
population and other factors are taken into con- 
sideration. 

The situation in the Sunday-school is equally 
alarming. According to the Interchurch World 
Movement Survey, the Protestant Sunday-school 
enrollment in the United States in 1916 was 21,800,- 
000. In 1920 it had shrunk to 15,600,000, over 
6,000,000 in four years! At that time— in 1920— 
there were over 27,000,000 children and young peo- 
ple under twenty-five who were nominally Protest- 
ant who were not enrolled in any Sunday-school. 

From other parts of Christendom, also, comes the 
same alarming story. In a period of six years pre- 

1 "The average annual increase of population from 1900 to 1910 
was 2.1 percent. The annual increase of the evangelical church 
membership was sometimes above and sometimes below that figure. 
Including everything which calls itself religious, the increase of 
church membership in the year 1910 was 1.81 percent; in 1911 it 
was 1.68 percent; in 1912 it was 1.6 percent; in 1913 it was 1.79 
percent; and in 1914 it was 2.05 percent." ("The New World- 
Religion," by Josiah Strong, D.D., Doubleday, Page & Co.) 



68 Every -Member Evangelism 

ceding the war, the Church of England in Great 
Britain lost far in excess of 300,000 from their 
Sunday-schools, and in nine years the Non-Con- 
formists lost 400,000. 

Across a period of twelve years at about the same 
time the Baptist Churches in Great Britain had 
a net loss of 24,000 from their membership, and 
85,000 from their Sunday-schools, the decline be- 
ing steady from year to year. 

One of the most serious features in the numerical 
decline is the increasing lapsing of church member- 
ship. 

One of the larger denominations — ^the Presby- 
terian, — lost throughout the world in three years 
just before the war over 260,000 by lapse of mem- 
bership, and that denomination is steadily losing 
50,000 a year from that cause. 

In a dozen states of which Chicago is the com- 
mercial center, 40,000 were received into the Baptist 
churches in a year just preceding the war, while 
in the same year the names of 14,000 were erased. 

During 1919, the Baptist churches of the North 
erased three names from their rolls for every five 
received. 

In nearly 600 English Baptist churches during a 
period of pre-war years, out of every 1,000 coming 
into the churches, 666 were lost by other causes 
than death. 

The Rev. Gwilym O. Griffith, writing of the Eng- 
lish Baptist decline, puts his finger on the cause when 
he says, *The great days of the Free churches have 



This ProCTam Will Save the Church 59 



'fc> 



not been the days when they have devised ingenious 
allurements to bribe the masses into half-empty 
sanctuaries, but when they have gone out to the 
fields and market places and village greens and 
taken the Gospel to the people," (Emphasis the 
author's.) 

Right here we have the real cause of the alarm- 
ing situation. We are increasingly disobedient to 
the Great Commission, and the results we are reap- 
ing are the inevitable fruitage of our disobedience. 

But suppose the tide turns, the decline in additions 
to the churches is arrested, and the Church appears 
to be regaining her former rate of growth, is that 
in itself an indication of returning spiritual vigor? 

That depends altogether on the basis on which 
the results are obtained. If the efforts at increasing 
the membership of the churches succeed only in add- 
ing a larger proportion of unsaved to the already 
''mixed multitude," if the present drift from the 
faith and the increasingly loose and worldly methods 
of getting members are to keep pace with the grow- 
ing church rolls, the Church, instead of regaining 
lost ground, will rather be taking to herself that 
which will only the more certainly insure her final 
decay and disintegration. 

As this book goes out there would seem to be 
some slight indications of an apparent turn in the 
tide of decline, but the apostasy from the faith is 
not being arrested, nor are the conditions admitting 
to membership being raised, but rather lowered, if 
anything, and what promise can our drives for in- 



70 Every- Member Evangelism 

creased membership hold under such conditions? 
Nothing but the promise of further worldliness and 
apostasy. 

2. hook at the Spiritual Decline 

One evidence of the decline is seen in the growing 
tendency to substitute worldly methods and machin- 
ery in Church life for the guidance and power of the 
Holy Spirit. The impression increasingly prevails 
that the Church is simply an institution whose pros- 
perity can be assured by applying the same methods 
used by the world. We are even going to the length 
of dehberately seeking the friendship and co-opera- 
tion of men who know nothing by experience of 
the grace of God and spiritual things, and who are 
therefore living in enmity against God. We are 
utterly forgetting that if the Church is faithful she 
will testify against the world that its works are 
evil, and that in return she will receive — not its 
friendship and co-operation, but its enmity and an- 
tagonism. We seem altogether to have lost sight 
of the fact that we can hardly hope to win m.en out 
of the world into salvation in Christ without point- 
ing out the irreconcilable difference between the 
Church and the world so clearly as to show them 
what they are to be saved out of as well as into. 
The fact is, great sections of the Church do not 
see this difference, and this is why they are so ready 
to adopt the carnal methods, measures and means 
of the world for doing the spiritual work of God. 

Dr. James A. Maxwell, writing on "A Partial 



This Program Will Save the Church 71 

Eclipse of the Church," says, "In nature, aim and 
method, the Church has no parallel or competitor 
in the world. It stands alone. It is distinct from 
everything else. In what it is, in what it does, 
in how it does it, there is no institution like the 
Church, or a church. It imitates nothing, it is de- 
pendent on nothing of the world. It is in the world 
but no part of it. There is no point [notice this] 
where the Church and the world touch or fraternize. 
Between no two things is there greater unlikeness. 
They are eternally and infinitely distinct and sepa- 
rate. . . . Because business enterprises call for 
certain measures in order to succeed, because 
political prosperity yields to certain methods, be- 
cause the war was won by certain movements, the 
Church should not be led to depart from the meth- 
ods peculiar to its nature and mission." 

These are strange words in the light of some 
things seen in the Church, and the principles set 
forth in them are in condemning contrast with 
many of the methods and measures already at work 
in many quarters. The fact is, the adoption of 
worldly plans is one of the things that is killing 
the Church. To adopt a program that succeeds in 
the world, but that God never gave to his Church, 
is a straight pathway to failure. Only God's Pro- 
gram will succeed. 

The Drift Into Pleasure 

The decline in the Church is also uncovered in 
her drift into worldly pleasure. The fact that a 
growing proportion of church-members are enam- 



72 Every- Member Evangelism 

ored of the pleasures of the world indicates un- 
mistakably the steady and alarming decline in her 
spiritual health. The letting down of the bars on 
worldly amusements, the growing tendency to con- 
done rather than condemn them, and their increas- 
ing popularity among church-members, tell all too 
plainly which way the Church is headed. A gen- 
eration ago some one said, ''I look for the Church 
and I find it in the world ; I look for the world and 
I find it in the Church." If this was true then^ 
what about conditions now? 

It is all right for the Church to be in the worlds 
provided the world is not in the Church. It is not 
when the ship is launched into the water, but when 
the water gets into the ship that she sinks. It is 
when the Church is in the world and at the same 
time not of it that she can rescue men out of the 
world, and in just the proportion in which the 
world gets into the Church, in just that proportion 
will her work of rescue decline. 

This is why the present condition of worldliness 
in the Church is so well pleasing to Satan. He can 
use it in his business. For if there is little or no 
apparent difference between the Church and the 
world, he can show that there is no need of salva- 
tion. There is nothing to be saved from. The ex- 
ternally decent life that church-members live is all 
there is of salvation. This is the lie that worldly 
church-members help Satan to propagate. And this 
is one of the reasons why the Church is in a de- 
cline. Her worldliness is closing her mouth and 



This Program Will Save the Church 7S 

making her soul-saving testimony in the name and 
power of Christ impossible. And it is also pro- 
ducing a decline in her testimony against the world,, 
which is one reason why the bars are coming down 
and the world is coming in like a flood. 

THE GROWING APOSTASY 

One of the most unmistakable proofs, however, 
of the present desperate condition of the Church is 
her steady drift from the fundamentals of the faith. 
This drift has been going on increasingly for a gen- 
eration or more, and has now become too apparent 
and marked to be ignored or explained away. 

While the fences between the denominations 
have been coming down, another has been going 
up right through the heart of evangelical Protest- 
antism which is dividing them into two camps, in 
one of which are those who hold with unswerving 
loyalty to the so-called orthodox faith, and in the 
other of which are those who hold more or less 
with the views of the Modernists and Destructive 
Critics. So apparent has this division become that 
Unitarians churches are advertising that the Unita- 
rians in other denominations will be welcomed with 
them. The result is that these two groups are be- 
coming increasingly restive in each other's com- 
pany, for how "can two walk together, except they 
be agreed?"^ 

What the outcome of this condition will be it is 
not within the purpose of the writer even to remark 



*Amos. 3:3. 



74 Every -Member Evangelism 

upon here. It is the fact itself as indicating the 
present condition of the Church that we are after. 

One thing is sure, however, and that is that the 
present situation must change very radically for the 
better soon, or the present decline cannot be 
stopped. For this is one of the chief contributing 
causes of the decline. Any loss of conviction con- 
cerning the eternal verities throws wide open the 
door for the entrance of worldly living and worldly 
methods, and all these things together are killing 
the Church. 

Think of the serious annual lapsing of church- 
membership. What is the fundamental cause of 
it? Receiving the unregenerate into church mem- 
bership ! "Demas hath forsaken rne, having loved 
this present world,"^ said Paul. And if Demas 
loves this present world enough to forsake the 
Church, he was probably never born again, for '*if 
any man love the world, the love of the Father is 
not in him,"^ and probably never was in him, or 
he would not have lapsed into the world. 

And what opens the way for the unregenerate 
to join the church? The present day departure 
from the fundamental doctrines of *'the faith which 
was once for all delivered unto the saints,"^ and 
the resulting lack of vital, saving message to tes- 
tify to the lost. 

12 Tim. 4:10.^ 2john 2:15. sjude 3 (Gr.). 



This Program Will Save the Church 75 

WHAT LIES BACK OF THE DRIFT 

Back of all this lies the fact that the life of 
Christ in the Church is being increasingly sup- 
pressed by the failure of his people to go out into 
their personal worlds in individual work for in- 
dividuals. Disobedience to the Great Commission 
is what is working death in the body. The weak- 
ness and anemia induced by the persistent inactivity 
of the members make it impossible for the body 
to throw off the diseases that are gnawing at her 
vitals. There is but one thing to do, and that is 
to return to that willingness to obey that always 
commands and opens the way for the inflow of those 
healing currents of the divine life which alone can 
drive disease out and restore full health and vigor. 

It is no wonder that Dr. A. H. Strong, speak- 
ing at the Baptist May Anniversaries in 1904, 
should express concern. He said, *'My greatest 
concern is lest we should cease to be a witnessing 
Church. Not sermons, but individual voices of 
private members of the Church are to evangelize 
the world. When the Romans shortened their 
swords they lengthened their territories. Wher- 
ever we have had this hand-to-hand work our in- 
crease has been great. When we cease to believe 
that men are lost, cease in private to urge them to 
come to Christ, the glory will depart from us. The 
church that ceases to be evangelistic will soon cease 
to be evangeHcal, and the church that ceases to be 
evangelical will soon cease to exist." 



76 Every -IMember Evangelism 

Then back of all this decline, back of all the 
weakness and criminal indifference of the Church, 
lies prayerlessness. Prayer is the Christian's vital 
breath, and we are breathing more and more 
feebly — the present declining health of the Church 
indicates how feebly. Those burdens of prayer 
for the Church, and those agonized yearnings over 
the lost that our fathers knew — where are they in 
the Church to-day? If God's people would go to 
their knees and wait on him as in other days, how 
quickly would the whole being be opened for the 
normal inflow of the divine life and the normal 
outflow of the divine service for the lost! This 
brings us to the other side of the question. 

77. The Need of Revival 

The conditions hinted at in the last few pages 
are proof enough that there is desperate need of 
revival in the Church. The working of death in 
the body can never be arrested except by a renewed 
inflow of life. The revival of spiritual vitaHty is 
the only thing that will drive out disease and bring 
back abounding health and normal service. But 
the question is, how is this to be brought about? 

There is but one way. When Christ said, *'Lo, 
I am with you all the days, even unto the con- 
summation of the Age/'^ he based that promise 
of his active and abiding presence on a condition. 
He preceded the promise by the command to ''Go 
into all the world and disciple the nations/'^ and 



^Matt. 28:20 (Gr.). =Matt. 28:19 (Gr.). 



This Program Will Save the Church 77 

then assuming that we would obey, he assured us 
of his active presence as we went. 

WHAT SPIRITUAL HEALTH IS 

This active presence of Christ means the con- 
stant inflow of his Hfe to be used in the constant 
outflow of our service. This is what Paul refers 
to when, in speaking of his own testimony to Christ, 
and of his yearning to win the lost and perfect the 
saved, he says, '*Whereunto I also labour, striving 
according to his working, which worketh in me 
mightily,"'^ While there was an outflow of serv- 
ice in obedience to the Great Commission, there 
was an inflow of Christ's life enabling Paul for 
his obedience. Christ could keep his promise be- 
cause Paul met the condition. 

And he will do the same thing with us. When 
and as long as we consent to do that which is the 
normal expression of his life in us, we will have 
the constant inflow of his life. But when we start 
out on any service to which he has not called us, 
his life will at once be suppressed within us and 
we shall be left to our own resources; because if 
we do not allow his life to act through us accord- 
ing to its nature, it cannot act at all. 

Right here is the true cause of spiritual ill-health. 
When we cease doing what is normal to his life 
within us, or when we start out to do what he has 
never called us to do, the outflow of divine service 
is at an end, and therefore the inflow of the divine 

»Col. 1:29, 



78 Every- Member Evangelism 

life is suppressed. And suppressed life brings ill- 
health. 

Here is also indicated the pathway to that re- 
newal of spiritual vitality for want of which the 
Church is dying to-day. WilHngness for the divine 
service will bring immediate response in the in- 
flow of the divine life, which will both drive out 
disease and produce abounding health. Spiritual 
health is certain when he who is our life is given 
constant access to the whole being, and his access 
to our whole being is certain when we are in the 
attitude of consent to his will. It is this alone that 
will open the doors for Christ to possess us in his 
fulness, and a continuance in this attitude is the 
only thing that will keep the doors open. 

This is why there is such a crying need for re- 
vival in the Church to-day. A revival is the only 
thing that will drive out disease and renew spirit- 
ual vigor. A revival is not a series of evangelistic 
meetings, but it is that opening of the whole being 
to God which permits the renewed inflow of his 
reviving life into ours. A series of meetings may 
bring us to see our need of a fresh yielding to God, 
and so bring revival, or a revival of the member- 
ship of a church may move them to hold a series of 
meetings to reach the lost ; but the revival we need 
is not extra meetings, but a renewal of the life of 
God within us. 



This Program Will Save the Church 79 
1. A Revived Will Drive Out Disease 

WORLDLINESS WILL GO OUT 

Worldliness is unthinkable in a church that be- 
comes obedient to the Great Commission, and 
thereby opens the way for the renewal of the 
divine life within. One of the reasons why worldly 
things ever find their way into any life is that the 
life is not being given to God for the lost. For 
when soul- winning stops, the divine life is thereby 
suppressed within, and this opens the way for the 
entrance of any and all those things of the world 
which the unhindered life of Christ within would 
otherwise keep out. A Christian who loves worldly 
things advertises his spiritual ill-health, and a 
worldly church proclaims to the world that it is 
living in disobedience to its Lord. And there is no 
certain cure for this condition except such a com- 
plete surrender to soul-winning activity as will open 
the way for an unhindered inflow of that life which 
alone can drive the world completely out. 

CHURCH STRIFE WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE 

Nothing is a more certain proof of a low spirit- 
ual vitality than church trouble. There is no place 
for strife where spiritual life abounds, for at the 
heart of spirituality is such love as makes strife 
impossible. When strife comes in, it is certain that 
love has gone out. The only certain cure for 
church trouble is love, and love takes control the 
moment a church surrenders to the work of soul- 



80 Every- Member Evangelism 

winning and starts out after the lost. Trouble- 
making and soul-saving can never abide together 
either in the same heart or the same church. 

DOCTRINAL DRIFT WILL DISAPPEAR 

Doctrinal troubles and questions about the Word 
of God are never raised by active soul-winners. 
The fundamentals of the faith are in no danger 
among those who are persistently seeking the lost. 
Heresy cannot live in an atmosphere created by 
spiritual health, but will soon go to its own. 

When a man gets into personal, first-hand con- 
tact with lost men and seeks to win them to Christ, 
he soon learns how lost they are, and that the only 
thing that will avail for such great sinners is a great 
salvation provided by a great Saviour. He will 
raise no question about the doctrines of sin, de- 
pravity, and hell, nor about the doctrines of grace, 
regeneration, and heaven. He will not listen when 
&ny one says there are flaws in *'the sword of the 
Spirit which is the word of God,"^ for he is using 
it and he sees how it cuts. A soul-winner who is 
unsound in doctrine is an impossibility, because the 
active inflow of the life of Christ makes it impos- 
sible. 

Then there are the isms, osophies, and ologies 
of the day. They will find no place where the 
divine life is abounding. The way to drive heresy 
out of a church is to make it too warm for the 
heretics. So if all those in any church who really 

*Eph. 6:17. 



This Program Will Save the Church 81 

know the Lord would give themselves up to literal 
obedience to the Lord's command, the resulting 
abundance of the divine life would soon make it so 
uncomfortably hot for Eddyites, Russellites, De- 
structive Critics, and all other heretics, that they 
would soon be glad to go to their own, while of the 
rest would no man dare join himself unto them 
unless he had been really born again. There is no 
room for false doctrine in a soul-winning church. 

2. A Revival Will Bring Spiritual Health 

SPIRITUALITY WILL ABOUND 

We are in a day of multiplying Bible conferences 
and conventions for the deepening of the spiritual 
life, and they are proving an increasing blessing to 
the whole Church of Christ. May they greatly 
increase in number! But if the spiritual food re- 
ceived in them is not worked out in the normal 
activity of soul- winning, they may even prove to 
be a curse. Think of what is likely to result from 
a lot of suppressed sermons turned sour on our 
spiritual stomachs! No wonder we have fussy 
spiritual dyspeptics among us who are ready to 
fight at a moment's notice over some non-essential 
doctrinal technicality which is more personal view- 
point than vital principle! No wonder there are a 
few cranks, fanatics, and extremists abroad in the 
land ! They are usually the kind who would walk 
a mile to a convention or a conference to hear some 
famous speaker, v/hile they would hardly walk 
across the street to take Christ to a lost soul. They 



82 Every -Member Evangelism 

will pray with great fervency, '*0 Lord, give us a 
blessing,'' but they will mostly forget to pray, *'0 
Lord, make us a blessing." 

But those who are really anxious for a deeper 
experience of God, a greater knowledge of the 
Word, and a higher reach of spiritual growth will 
find all these things with unfailing certainty in the 
work of soul-winning. For nothing else so opens 
all the avenues of the soul to all that God is to his 
people and all that he has to reveal of his truth. 
This is the way to see all the great truths in their 
relations, and thereby avoid those distressing ex- 
tremes and vagaries that we sometimes meet with. 
The teachings received in Bible conferences and like 
places have a meaning and a value for the persis- 
tent soul-winner that they can have for no one else, 
for such a Christian will understand the deep things 
of God as no one else can. The deep truths of the 
Word are not open to scholarship, but are under- 
stood through the Holy Spirit alone, and the ever- 
active anointing of the Spirit which abides on the 
soul-winner makes the deep things plain and the 
great doctrines luminous. A whole church full of 
soul-winners is the most responsive congregation to 
which any spiritual preacher can ever minister m 
the things of God. 

Soul-winning, therefore, will renew the abound- 
ing spirituality of the early Church, and bring an 
abundance of health and vitality that will once more 
glorify God and his mighty power before m.en. 



This Program Will Save the Church 83 

THERE WILL BE MATERIAL PROSPERITY 

One of the most practical evidences of spiritual 
vigor in a church is the condition the treasury is 
in. The spirituality that results from soul-winning 
activity will end all financial trouble. For the Word 
says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his 
righteousness; and all these things [the necessary 
material resources] shall be added unto you/'^ 
Man's method is to reverse this divine program 
and read it, *'Seek ye first many millions of money, 
and the kingdom of God will be added unto you." 
But nothing opens the pocket-book and brings the 
money out in generous streams like the normal 
working in the heart of that constraining love of 
Christ that sends us out after the lost. Here alone 
is the secret of large and continuous missionary 
giving; here alone is the source of adequate and 
unstrained financial support of local work. The 
financial stream will be small and inadequate under 
the pressure of human mechanics; it will be large 
and generous under the impulse of divine dynamics. 

A wonderful illustration of this principle lies in 
the success of the Southern Baptists in their great 
financial eflfort of 1920, in which $92,500,000 was 
pledged. The writer wrote and asked Dr. L. R. 
Scarborough, the leader of the campaign, whether 
money-raising or soul-winning was most empha- 
sized in the campaign, and he replied, "I did my 
best as General Director of the $75,000,000 cam- 

^Matt. 6:33. 



84 Every -Member Evangelism 

paign to set the soul of Southern Baptists from 
their knees after lost souls. The emphasis was 
placed on evangelism, missions, enlistment, sur- 
render to God, and the deeper things of the spir- 
itual life, and I feel that the ninety-two and a half 
miUion dollars which we secured in cash and 
pledges came in as a voluntary expression of our 
people's inner life and love for a lost world. I am 
more and more convinced that when our people 
come to God and go with him after the lost, all the 
needful things for the Kingdom's ongoing will 
come to us." 

The history of the Southwestern Baptist Theo- 
logical Seminary, at Fort Worth, Texas, of which 
Dr. Scarborough is President, also illustrates what 
happens in a Seminary when soul-winning is put 
first. During the season when the Seminary was 
ten years old, eighty-eight students and members 
of the faculty held 477 revival campaigns, saw 
10,252 profess faith in Christ, baptized 6,080, and 
brought into Baptist churches by baptism and letter 
9,611. This kind of work is the steady and settled 
program of that Seminary, Dr. Scarborough him- 
self holding from eight to ten evangelistic cam- 
paigns a year. 

Now notice the financial effect. During the sea- 
son just mentioned, $318,000 was raised in the 
meetings for denominational purposes, and at the 
end of ten years the Seminary itself had assets of 
a million, practically all of which was raised on 
the evangelistic note. *'Seek ye first the kingdom 



This Program Will Save the Church 85 

of God, and his righteousness ; and all these things 
shall be added/'^ God keeps his word! 

Let any church that is having a hard time finan- 
cially give itself, in the power of the Spirit, to 
every-member evangelism, and see if God will not 
keep his promise. They must go after the lost 
with no thought of money, of course, leaving that 
absolutely with God, but no church can possibly 
give themselves to soul-winning without being 
blessed financially. 

Now if obedience to the Great Commission will 
give a church vigorous and abounding health in 
both spiritual and material resources, this includes 
everything that goes to make up a normal condi- 
tion in church life. 

We have all the evidence by this time that any 
one can need, therefore, that the only thing that 
can save the Church out of threatening death and 
into vigorous life is a literal following of the divine 
Program. If further evidence is needed, however, 
it will appear in the next chapter in the form of 
actual results in a few churches that are approach- 
ing this Program. We turn now to the side of 
the question that has to do with the lost. 



^Matt. 6:33. 



CHAPTER II 
THIS PROGRAM WILL REACH THE LOST 

IF the Church needs to express the divine life in 
order to keep in health, the lost need to see the 
divine life expressed in order to desire to have it. 
The world is always face to face with that kind 
of life whose mottoes are ''Safety first/' 'Take 
care of yourself," "Look out for number one"; 
and there is nothing in it that is attractive or satis- 
fying. But whenever they meet with that kind of 
life that puts sacrifice first, takes care of the help- 
less, and looks out for the other fellow, they find 
themselves in an altogether different realm. 

THE MARKS OF THE CROSS 

At the heart of the new life in the Christian lies 
sacrificial love, which shows itself out before men 
in soul-winning service — the personal, private, man- 
to-man kind. That this takes daily sacrificial living 
every successful soul-winner will testify. It takes 
the crucified life to witness to the crucified Christ. 
No other kind can do so with success. 

The reason is that the world has much the same 
attitude toward the testimony of Christians to the 
risen Christ that Thomas had toward the testimony 
of the disciples to him. When they told him Christ 
had risen, he refused to believe in a risen Christ 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 87 

until he had seen the marks of the cross on him. 
And the world will not believe we are risen with 
Christ, and therefore not in the Christ who is risen, 
until they can see the marks of his cross on us. It 
has been said that the world will never believe a 
man is a Christian until it sees that he has been 
crucified and lives again. 

THE CROSS AND SOUL-WINNING 

The evidence of our sacrifice for their salvation 
must therefore be visible before men are likely to 
believe in us, and they must beUeve in us before 
they will pay much heed to our message. And we 
put ourselves where men will believe in us the 
moment we commit ourselves to life-long sacrificial 
service for their salvation, for then we can go to 
them with the marks of the cross upon us. Such 
Christians can get a hearing for their testimony. 
Read the biography of Uncle John Vassar for 
abundant illustration.^ 

But that the world pays little attention to the 
Church or her message to-day, and that the unsaved 
are therefore going wholesale to a lost world, has 
already been abundantly shown. There is cer- 
tainly a reason for this fearful situation, and we 
will seek to find it. 

/. Why the Church is Failing 

The lost are not coming to church services. They 
never did come in any great numbers, and to-day, 
in spite of all our modern methods and frantic 

^American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, $1.00, 



88 Every -Member Evangelism 

appeals, they are coming in smaller and smaller 
numbers, especially when revival meetings are on. 
It frequently happens that after a most appealing 
evangelistic message it is found that not a single 
unsaved soul is in the audience. Why? 

1. The Church is Making the Wrong Appeal, 

The thing that is vitally wrong with our appeal is 
that the dominant emphasis is being placed more 
and more on those things that can attract only the 
natural man. We play up the things that are an 
appeal to the senses. We bait the lost with fine 
music, beautiful architecture, splendid sociability, 
sensational topics, racy discussions of current 
events, and even moving pictures ; and the result is 
that when they do come, they take one snifif at our 
bait and say ''Cheap!'' and then go straight back 
to the world where they can get what they call the 
"real thing/' 

Even when a great evangelistic effort is being 
made, most of the Lord's people resort to an appeal 
to the natural man to get the lost to the meetings 
by emphasizing the crowds, the great singing, the 
spectacular preaching, and other natural attrac- 
tions, and many an evangelist helps it along by his 
antics in the pulpit. 

Indeed, it is even possible for much of the ear- 
nest and sober appeal of evangeHst and pastor to be 
aimed at the natural man only, and much more of 
that is being done to-day than most of us realize. 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 89 

Whether a touching story or a direct appeal to the 
emotions is aimed only at the natural man depends 
altogether on what lies back of the appeal in the 
message of the speaker. Actors and novelists make 
appeal to the emotions, but their appeals are purely 
to the natural man, with no thought of the glory 
of God behind them, and are therefore utterly de- 
void of spiritual value. 

A CRIME AGAINST THE LOST 

For the Church to make its appeals to the natural 
man is a crime against the lost! For it is not only 
perfectly useless as a means to reach them for God, 
but it may even become a sure means of driving 
them away from God for good. Think what may 
happen when the lost desert the cheap natural 
attractions of the Church and go back to the world. 
They are likely to carry away with them not only 
an utterly false conception of the nature and mis- 
sion of the Church, but also a determination never 
to go back again. 

When a great gathering of laboring men will 
cheer the name of Christ and hiss the mention of 
the Church, as has been done, it is extremely sig- 
nificant. Of course the cheering may mean noth- 
ing as to their real attitude toward Christ, but the 
hissing clearly indicates their contempt for what- 
ever appeal the Church has made to them. 

When the men in the World War gathered to 
listen to a preacher, if his message was to the 
natural man and lacked the genuine ring and the 



90 Every -Member Evangelism 

right appeal, they got up and went out. But never 
did a crowd desert a man who had a heaven-sent 
appeal. A false note was intolerable to the soldiers, 
but they were ready for the genuine thing every 
time. 

A HUMILIATION OF CHRIST 

The appeal of the Church to the natural man is 
also a shameful humiliation of our Lord! The 
world has already humiHated him to the utmost 
limit of human ability, and for the Church to drag 
him down before a w^orld that loves to see him 
humiliated is shameful beyond expression. 

When will we learn that Christ and his Church 
are not in the business of attracting men through 
their senses? When shall we learn that Christ is 
not in competition with the world for the attraction 
of the natural man? When shall we learn that the 
world can outbid us at every point in all those 
things that make a natural appeal only? 

The children of this world are expert at that 
business, for they not only have the advantage of 
continued practice, but they have also at hand all 
the perfected means of appeal, from the most re- 
fined to the most degraded, while unregenerate 
humanity, with an insatiable demand for all that 
the world has to offer, stands eager to respond to 
their every appeal. 

The Church is operating in an entirely different 
realm. Our mission lies altogether in the spiritual 
realm, a realm into which the world can never 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 91 



is 



come, and in which the world can never offer com- 
petition. 

This is one great reason why Satan tempts us 
out of our own sphere of appeal into that of the 
world, for if we yield to the temptation, we not 
only defeat our spiritual appeal or else leave it 
unmade altogether, but we enter a realm where we 
will be not only utterly powerless, but where we 
will even become the hissing and the by-word of 
the very ones we seek to reach for God. No won- 
der he is doing his utmost to get the Church into 
the realm of worldly appeal. 

2. The Church is Using the Wrong Method 

While the lost are in desperate need of what we 
have to give, yet there is among them no conscious 
and active demand for it. Their demand for what 
the world has to offer is intensely alive, and absorbs 
their whole attention. But their demand for what 
the Church has to offer is altogether dormant, and 
they have no time nor attention to give to it. 

Now it is impossible, in the nature of things, for 
any one to be induced to go after something for 
which he has no conscious and active demand. And 
so for the Church to make the spiritual appeal to 
the lost when their demand for spiritual things is 
dormant, without doing the only thing that will 
arouse that demand, is a more certain pathway to 
failure than it can ever be to success. No matter 
how earnest or even frantic our appeal may be, so 
long as the lost are conscious of no demand for 



92 Every -Member Evangelism 

what we are offering, our appeal will go all un- 
heeded. 

A DEMAND MUST BE CREATED 

There is therefore one thing that must always be 
done before a spiritual appeal can ever mean any- 
thing. A demand for spiritual things must be 
created. 

This must be one thing Christ had in mind when 
he told us to go out into the highways and hedges 
and compel them to come in. He did not mean 
thaf they are to be taken by physical force and 
dragged to church, but that we are to do something 
for them and with them that will create such a 
demand for the spiritual things the Church has to 
offer that they will be literally compelled to come 
to church because they cannot stay away. 

This is being done universally in business. A 
merchant can literally compel you to come into his 
store by creating such a demand for what he has 
to offer that you are unable to keep from going. 

This was done with the writer some years ago, 
while a pastor in Minneapolis. 

Answering the door-bell, a piano personal worker, 
usually called a salesman, introduced himself and 
asked if we owned a piano. 

I said, *'No, but we have an organ that is ade- 
quate for our present needs.'' 

''Do you ever expect to own a piano ?'' he asked. 

''Yes," I said, "we may get one some day, but 
we are not interested now. Good day." 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 93 

But he gracefully ignored the "Good day," and 
said, *'Have you any children?" 

"Yes," I said, "we have two." 

"Do you expect to give them music lessons?" 

"Yes, after a while, when they are older, but we 
are not ready yet." 

"You will need a piano when they start to take 
lessons, and it will be to your advantage to get one 
now while our firm is making a special reduction." 

"That might be," I said, "but my present income 
will not permit of it, and as I am quite busy this 
morning, I will have to say, Good day!'* 

But he very skilfully spoiled my "Good day" 
again by saying in his most engaging manner, "But 
we have good used pianos that can be bought on 
payments as low as three dollars a month, and with 
your permission we will set into your house without 
obligation for a month any one you want to pick 
out, used or new." 

That was where he got me, though I did not let 
him know it then. 

I said, "That is a very generous oflfer, but I can't- 
consider it to-day," and he finally left feeling he 
had lost out. 

But within two days I was in that piano store 
picking out a piano ! 

How did that salesman get me there? 

By coming to my house and doing the kind of 
personal work that created in me such a demand 
for what his store had to offer that I could not 
stay away. There was lying back in my mind a 



94 Every -Member Evangelism 

half intention of owning a piano some day, but it 
was dormant until that salesman's personal work 
brought it into such activity that I was compelled 
to go to the store to get it satisfied. That salesman 
had compelled me to come in. 

This is the way to bring the lost to church. Do 
the thing with them and for them that will create 
in them such a demand for the spiritual things the 
Church has to offer that they will be compelled to 
come in. 

GOD MUST CREATE THE DEMAND 

But when, we begin to inquire how we are to 
create this demand, we are thrown altogether be- 
yond our own resources. The demand that must 
be created is a spiritual demand, and only God can 
create such a demand in the unspiritual soul of a 
lost man. We are helpless. 

The fact is, not only have the lost no conscious 
demand for spiritual things, they are naturally an- 
tagonistic to them. The one who said, **And I, if 
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto me,"^ is the very Christ they have turned their 
backs on and crucified, and a sight of him con- 
demns, and stings, and burns, and they can have 
no natural desire to go where the one they have 
sinned against is the sole attraction. The truth is, 
the heart of the unsaved is ''enmity against God," 
and the things of the Spirit of God — spiritual 

^John 12:32. 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 95 

things — are ''foolishness'' to them, and they are so 
naturally incapable of being attracted by the things 
of the Spirit — indeed, these things are so unat- 
tractive to them — that they prefer to stay as far 
away as possible from the place where these things 
are the central theme. 

There is therefore only one thing that can be 
done to create a demand for what the Church has 
to offer. A miracle must be worked. Nothing 
short of this will be of the least avail. For some- 
thing must take place in the hearts of lost men which 
will compel them to come after what their whole 
being rebels against. The Christ they have wronged 
and driven as far out of his own universe as they 
could get him must somehow become so attractive 
to them that they will be compelled to come to the 
place where he is lifted up, in spite of all the 
natural blindness and enmity of their hearts. And 
only a miracle can bring such a thing to pass, and 
only God can work that miracle. 

This is why the Church is failing. We are try- 
ing to do with our human methods, and our appeals 
either to a spiritual demand that has never been 
created or to the unregenerate heart of the natural 
man, what a miracle worked by God alone can 
accomplish. We do not seem to realize th^t we 
ourselves can do absolutely nothing that will create 
in the lost such a demand that they will be com- 
pelled to come where the Christ they have crucified 
is held up. We do not seem to understand that an 
actual miracle is demanded, and that therefore we 



96 Every -Member Evangelism 

are utterly helpless. This brings us to the other 
side of the question. 

//. When the Church Succeeds 

That the miracle which compels lost men to come 
to church and to yield to Christ against their nat- 
ural inclination is being worked in some lives 
around us we all know. But that it is not being 
worked in the hearts of the great masses of unsaved 
men about us we are also painfully conscious. 

Now God can work this miracle when the Church 
becomes the channel of his power between himself 
and the lost. It is therefore of the utmost impor- 
tance that we find out just what we must do in 
order that God may work this miracle through us 
among the great masses of the unsaved about us. 
In other words, we must know, if God has revealed 
it, what is the fundamental principle that lies be- 
hind his use of us in working the miracle of regen- 
eration. Let us study it. 

1. The Fundamental Principle Behind the Program 

In bringing the lost to Christ two things must 
always be done. A demand for spiritual truth 
that saves must be created, and then this demand 
must be satisfied. 

That which creates this demand is a divinely 
quickened consciousness of the deep need of salva- 
tion, and that which satisfies it is the divinely pro- 
vided remedy for sin in the blood of Christ. 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 97 

THE PLACE OF PRAYER 

Behind the creation of this demand lies prayer. 
The disciples were saturated with the spirit of 
prayer when they went among the lost at Pente- 
cost, and prayer has continued to be the background 
of all real soul-saving work until this hour. 

Think why this is. The Lord has told us that 
the lost cannot receive the Holy Spirit, because they 
see him not, neither know him, and also that the 
natural man receives not the things of the Spirit — 
initial among which is conviction of sin — neither 
can he know them, for they are spiritually dis- 
cerned. 

Then L*e has also said, "T will send him [the 
Comforter] unto you [not unto the world, notice, 
for the world cannot receive him]. And when he 
is come [to you], he will reprove the world of sin, 
and of righteousness, and of judgment."^ 

Do you see where this puts the Lord's people? 
It puts us squarely between God and the lost in the 
miracle of the conviction of sin — that miracle which 
creates a demand for the things of the Spirit con- 
trary to the natural inclinations of the heart. It 
makes us the channel of God's power between him- 
self and the lost. 

The fact that the lost can receive the Holy Spirit 
in his conviction of sin only through Christians is 
abundantly illustrated by the fact that they are never 
led to salvation except through those who are 
saved. 

ijohn l^;7-8. 
8 



98 Every- Member Evangelism 

Nov/ prayer somehow gets us into that place 
where God can use us as channels. One thing it 
does is to bring us cleansing, and thus fit us to be 
channels. God's power is a holy power, and he 
cannot compromise his holiness by letting his holy 
power flow through an unclean channel. His arm 
is never shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear 
heavy that it cannot hear, but our sins hide his face 
from us and prevent his saving power from flow- 
ing through us. What a fearful thing for a Chris- 
tian to sin! Sin makes us a barrier instead of a 
chanyiel! 

Prayer also does another thing. It not only fits 
us to be channels, but it opens the way for God 
actually to make channels of us between himself 
and the lost. Just how he pours his power through 
us to produce conviction of sin in the lost we shall 
never know here, but that he actually does it all 
Christians who pray for the lost can bear abundant 
testimony. Those who have not seen this miracle 
wrought have had little or no experience in divine 
things. 

Another thing that must be borne in mind is that 
it is not only impossible, apart from a miracle, for 
the natural man to receive the things of the Spirit, 
but that Satan is also blinding the minds of the 
unbelieving, ''lest the light of the glorious gospel 
of Christ, who is the image of God, should dawn 
upon them,"^ and they should be saved. That is, 
Satan's blinding is directed toward the Gospel, that 

*2 Cor. 4:3, 4. 



This Program Will Reach the Lost y^ 

the unsaved may not be able to see or understand 
it. And so the blindness of men as to what the 
Gospel really is, being satanic and therefore super- 
human, cannot be cured by human means; a 
miracle is the only thing that will do it. God 
himself, therefore, must dispel this darkness, and 
this he does by the illumination of the Holy Spirit 
wrought through his conviction of sin, of righteous- 
ness, of judgment. This means that by a miracle 
the Holy Spirit illumines the very thing that Satan's 
superhuman blinding covers up. Conscience can 
convince a sinner that it is a sin to do not, but only 
the Holy Spirit, through the miracle of his illumi- 
nation, can convince him that it is a sin to believe 
not,^ and He does this by holding up the Christ on 
whom he has not believed, the good news about 
whom is the Gospel. 

It is precisely at this point that prayer does its 
most effective work. This illuminating work of 
the Spirit is dependent on prayer. We do not know 
why this is, nor how prayer opens the way for the 
Spirit's illumination, but we do know that unless 
both our witnessing and soul-winning ministry are 
commenced, carried on, and consummated in prayer, 
little or no illumination will attend our work. Noth- 
ing can take the place of prayer. We always ad- 
vance in our evangelistic work only so fast and so 
far as we advance on our knees. Prayer produces 
the atmosphere through which alone sinners can 
hear the Word, and unless they hear the Word the 

ijohn 16:9. 



100 Every -Member Evangelism 

Holy Spirit is unable to illumine the blinded mind 
and convince the heart that their need is Christ 
alone. Witnessing apart from prayer, no matter 
how convincing to the reason, or even how convict- 
ing to the conscience, may prove to be a ''savour 
of death unto death." Prayer opens, and prayer- 
lessness closes, the channel between some lost soul 
and God. 

THE PLACE OF TESTIMONY 

If the Holy Spirit, then, is unable to convict and 
regenerate except through the Word, he is unable 
to accomplish his work in a heart until the Word is 
heard. This requires witnesses. And so just as 
prayer is needed to open the way for the witness- 
ing, so witnessing is needed to accomplish the work 
for which the praying opened the way. Neither 
can be effective apart from the other. 

Our witnessing, however, does not produce the 
conviction and the conversion of all who hear it. 
The testimony of Christ himself did not produce 
that result. And the Gospel has never reached all 
the lost in any given generation from Pentecost 
until now. Not because God arbitrarily decided 
that he would not permit it to reach them all, but 
because those who were not reached by it arbi- 
trarily decided not to permit God to reach them 
with it. 

God foresaw that this would happen, for known 
to him are all events of both time and eternity, and 
so he has told us beforehand that it would happen. 
The Gospel, he said through James, would sue- 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 101 

ceed in taking out from among the Gentiles a people 
for his name/ but not that all the Gentiles would 
come in this age, and certainly not all the Jews, to 
whom blindness in part has happened until the end 
of the Age.^ If the Gospel was intended, there- 
fore, to save all men in any one generation of this 
age, it has been the most stupendous failure of all 
human history. It has failed more than sixty times 
over, for there have been that many generations 
since Pentecost, and in no generation has there been 
more than a fraction saved. But if the Gospel was 
intended to be *'the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that believeth/'^ then it has never failed 
in the slightest degree, for every one without excep- 
tion who has believed it has been saved. 

But even though vv^e may know beforehand that 
many of the unsaved in our personal worlds may 
not come, that does not release us in the least from 
our responsibility to take the Gospel to every one 
and beseech them in Christ's stead to be reconciled 
to God. Christ's command was to take the Gospel 
to ''every creature/'^ and all obedient disciples will 
do this, not knowing as we do so which shall pros- 
per, whether this word of testimony or that. 

WITNESSING AND SOUL-WINNING 

This brings us to a distinction between simple 
witnessing and the work of soul- winning, that it is 
of the utmost importance to recognize. There is a 
profound difference between them. Witnessing is 

*Acts 15:14. 2Rom. 11:25. ^Rom. 1:16. *Mark 16:15. 



102 Every -Member Evangelism 

the divine method of preparing the way for soul- 
winning, but it does not result in the winning of all 
to whom we witness. We are to witness to all, 
without exception, but we can do successful soul- 
winning work only with those whom the Holy Spirit 
is able to bring to such a conviction of sin as results 
in willingness to hear about Christ. 

It is because many workers fail to see this dis- 
tinction, and therefore fail to watch for the evi- 
dences of the Spirit's convicting work in the heart, 
that so many are urged, pushed, crowded, and some- 
times even forced to a decision which is superficial 
because it is not wrought by the Holy Spirit. 

Few even of the most earnest workers seem to 
know that there are two kinds of conviction of sin : 
that of conscience, and that of the Holy Spirit. 
Dr. A. J. Gordon spoke of the former as "legal" 
conviction, and of the latter as ''evangelical" con- 
viction. And it is because of ignorance at this 
point that so many workers urge those who have 
only a stirred conscience to a decision that does not 
last, because behind it there is only the power of a 
human resolution. 

The difference between these two kinds of con- 
viction is very radical, and very plain to the spir- 
itually-minded when once they have seen it. Con- 
science convicts us of a broken law ; the Holy Spirit 
of a rejected Christ. Conscience gives us a vision 
of sin committed; the Holy Spirit of sin canceled. 
Conscience speaks to us in terms of morality; the 
Holy Spirit in terms of spirituality. Conscience 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 103 

seeks to produce good works in us ; the Holy Spirit 
seeks to produce faith in us. Conscience urges us 
to repentance toward a past life; the Holy Spirit 
to ''repentance toward God/'^ Conscience leads us 
to conversion to a higher ideal of living; the Holy 
Spirit to conversion to Christ. Conscience is al- 
ways busy in all men, either accusing or else excus- 
ing ; the Holy Spirit operates only in those to whom 
he is permitted to give the vision of a crucified 
Christ. This shows why we must witness to all, 
for only so can the way be opened for the Spirit 
to give a saving vision of Christ to all who are 
willing to receive it. 

When these distinctions are clearly seen it be- 
comes easy to tell when the Spirit is working in a 
heart, and when the interest is produced only by a 
stirred conscience. The one in whom conscience 
only is at work will talk freely and even intel- 
ligently in terms of morality and the humanities 
but w411 not know where we are going when we 
show the utter worthlessness of all human doings 
and begin to witness to Christ. Only when the 
Spirit is permitted to dispel Satan's blinding by the 
miracle of his illumination will the meaning of 
Christ's work on the cross begin to dawn. 

It is precisely because so many workers, yes, even 
some pastors and evangelists, fail to see the vital 
distinction between these two kinds of conviction 
that the number is increasing in our churches who, 
urged to it only by the lashings of an accusing con- 

^Acts 20:21. 



104 Every -Member Evangelism 

science, were converted simply to a higher ideal of 
living, but have no knowledge whatever of salva- 
tion through Christ. In too many cases our evan- 
gelistic special efforts and campaigns and drives 
have increased church-membership as their goal 
more than the winning of the lost to Christ, and the 
appeal that is made to the lost and the methods 
that are used to reach them are in harmony with 
this program rather than with the divine Program. 
This is the tragedy of altogether too much of our 
evangelistic work to-day. 

It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we* 
see these distinctions just outlined, in order that 
we may not bungle in this most important of all 
Christian service. While our testimony is to be 
given to all, our efforts to bring acceptance of Christ 
are to be put forth only with those whom the Holy 
Spirit points out to us as being made ready by his 
work to accept Christ. That is, we need to be ex- 
ceedingly careful about either going ahead of the 
Spirit or falling behind his leadings. To urge a 
person to a surrender for which the Holy Spirit 
has not been permitted to prepare him is a grave 
mistake, and to fail to bring a person to a decision, 
under the enabhng of the Spirit, that he is ready 
to make, is an equally grievous blunder. We need 
to be utterly under the Spirit's direction in this 
work. 

There is another point, also, on which we need to 
be clear. If we see no response to our testimony 
and no evidence of the Spirit's work after bearing 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 105 

witness a few times to a given lost soul, we are not 
to conclude that he will never be able to do his work 
in that heart and that therefore we need say no 
more about Christ to him. For we are to bear our 
testimony to all the unsaved, no matter how unre- 
sponsive they may seem, until our opportunities are 
gone, hoping that some word may yet get the heart 
open for the Spirit to do his work. We are not to 
try to force a decision to accept Christ when the 
Spirit has not been permitted to give such a vision 
of him as will produce a divinely wrought convic- 
tion, but we are not therefore to stop all witness- 
ing, for it may be that one more word concerning 
our Lord will be just the word the Spirit can use. 

But it is of the greatest importance here also that 
we should be constantly under the Spirit's control, 
for if we are not, our continued witnessing is in 
grave danger of degenerating into nagging, and will 
then repel and drive men away from Christ instead 
of bringing them to him. 

Indeed, when the Spirit really begins his work in 
a heart, little or no persuasion is necessary, and 
certainly no crowding or forcing. There was no 
coaxing on the Day of Pentecost. Instead, those 
with whom the Spirit was at work came to Peter 
and to the rest and cried, **What shall we do?"^ 
And to-day in any evangelistic service where the 
Spirit is powerfully at work, the lost come to Christ 
without any high pressure methods of any kind. 
Tricks played on an audience and traps to force 



^Acts 2:37. 



106 Every -Member Evangelism 

the unsaved into decisions they do not really make 
are resorted to only when man's methods are sub- 
stituted for the divine Program. 

THE REASON FOR THE DIVINE PROGRAM 

This brings us to where we can begin to see more 
clearly v/hy the Lord gave us precisely the Pro- 
gram he did rather than some other. Witnessing 
is the divinely appointed method of seeking for the 
lost. Not for church-members, but for lost souls. 
For this is the only method by which it is possible 
to find among the lost all those who can be brought 
to respond to the Spirit's conviction of sin. This 
is so because it is only the goodness of God in 
Christ on the cross that can lead to repentance, and 
it is only by witnessing to all concerning the cru- 
cified Christ, that the Spirit is able to quicken those 
who are willing into such a vision of him as will 
produce that conviction of sin which alone can lead 
to repentance toward God and faith toward our 
Lord Jesus Christ. The lost must be sought and 
found of the Holy Spirit before they can be saved, 
and he can find those who are willing to be saved 
only through our testimony. 

We can also see why we are commanded to take 
our testimony to the lost, and not to expect them to 
come after it. It is only the vision of a crucified 
Christ that can bring men to conviction, and until 
that work is done in the heart through our testi- 
mony to Christ, there is no real demand for what 
the Church has to oflFer. 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 107 

This shows the folly of expecting the lost to 
come to the services of the Church when we have 
done nothing to create a demand for them, and 
also the folly of seeking to create that demand by 
any other than the divine Program. 

When all these facts are taken in, we begin to 
3ee why it is that the Lord's people must give them- 
selves to prayer accompanied by witnessing, and to 
witnessing saturated with prayer ; and why the Lord 
has commanded every disciple to go everywhere 
bearing private testimony to Christ, in the power 
of the Spirit, to all the lost in their individual 
worlds ; and why it is that certain disciples selected 
by the Holy Spirit must give their whole time both 
to private and to public teaching and testimony, and 
to the training of the rest of the disciples in that 
service which alone can build up the Church both 
in numbers and in spirituaUty. 

When this program is followed, God is then able, 
and only then, to work those miracles of both cre- 
ating such a demand as will bring the lost in great 
numbers to the services of the Church, and of sup- 
plying that demand by new life in Christ. This is 
a fundamental reason for the Great Commission 
Program. 

A striking illustration of this Program at work 
on a small scale occurred in an evangelistic cam- 
paign the writer was conducting in a small Cana- 
dian city. A community dance was put on every 
night for the last two weeks of the meetings to 
draw the young people away. A young lady was 



108 Every -Member Evangelism 

under deep conviction of the Spirit, and in answer 
to her natural inclinations was trying to get away 
from it. And so each day of the last week she 
made an engagement to attend the dance that night, 
and yet each night found her in the meeting with 
her dance engagement broken. Time and again she 
said she did not know why she was at church, for 
she certainly did not want to come, but she seemed 
unable to stay away. Conviction deepened until on 
the last night she accepted Christ. 

Now how was this brought about? By the pri- 
vate praying and personal testimony of two girl 
friends, converted the first week of the meetings, 
reaching its climax and culmination in the public 
testimony of the evangelist's messages. By fol- 
lowing the Program of the Day of Pentecost, the 
Holy Spirit was able, through those two young 
women, to work the miracle of creating such a 
demand for the things of the Spirit in that girl's 
heart that, in spite of her inclinations to the con- 
trary, she was literally compelled to come to church. 
And then by following that Program without let-up, 
as the Spirit led, he was able to work the consum- 
mating miracle of supplying the demand he had 
been permitted to create, by bringing her to the new 
birth. When we obey, God does the rest. 

2, The Present Day Practice of the Program 

It will be both inspiring and confirming to note 
how the New Testament Program reaches the lost, 
even when it is only partially followed, and so we 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 109 

will give heed to some of the things the Lord is 
doing through a few of his yielded people. 

IN A FEW METHODIST CHURCHES 

In the literature of the Methodist Forward Move- 
ment of 1920 is the story of a church long without 
revival in which one hundred and forty teams of 
four each reached one hundred and fifty-three for 
Christ in sixty days, largely by personal work. 

In a suburban New York church that had not 
had a conversion for years, the young people were 
spurred to action and went after their chums, which 
resulted in thirty-two joining the church in one 
evening. 

In a church in which over four hundred mem- 
bers were sick, and in spite of very bad weather 
and almost impassable roads, in a six weeks' re- 
vival campaign one hundred and eight were con- 
verted through a well-organized campaign of per- 
sonal work. During four years in that church per- 
sonal evangelism was much emphasized, and during 
that time 1,158 came into the church, 974 of whom 
came as a direct result of personal evangelism. 

In another church in which the Official Board 
led the way in personal work, the membership was 
increased from six hundred to twenty-one hundred 
in a little more than four years. 

IN A PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 

Somewhere the writer has seen the story of a 
Presbyterian church that had gone over a year 
without a conversion. The pastor called the Ses- 
sion together and offered to resign. 



110 Every- Member Evangelism 

The officials strongly objected to the pastor's pur- 
pose, and said they were being edified, and there 
was no need of his resigning. 

''Edified for what?'' asked the pastor. 

In the conversation that followed the pastor fin- 
ally turned to the chairman of the Session and 
asked, *'Do you believe that through you a soul has 
ever been saved?" 

"No," said the official. And all the rest of the 
Board had to give the same answer. 

Then the pastor said, ''Unless the Lord gives this 
church souls in the near future, I shall ask that 
you also resign as the elders of it." 

"But we are getting along very well," they said. 

"No, we are not getting along at all," said the 
pastor. 

And then he got them to their knees where they 
dedicated themselves to the work of soul-winning. 

This was on Saturday night. On Monday morn- 
ing the chairman of that Session spoke to his con- 
fidential clerk and said, "How long have you worked 
for me, Bob?" 

"Fifteen years," he said. 

Then the employer said, "I am an elder in the 
church you attend when you go anywhere. You 
are not a Christian. I know it and have known it 
all the time, and yet have never said a word to you 
about it. But my soul is on fire now, and I want 
that we both get down and give ourselves to Christ. 
I will do it for greater consecration and you for 
salvation." 



This Program Will Reach the Lost HI 

The young man knelt and received Christ 
right there, and that elder led ten others of his 
employees to accept Christ that day. The other elders 
were doing the same thing in other places of busi- 
ness that week, and the next Sunday over thirty 
joined that Presbyterian church as a result of that 
work. 

DR. R. A. TORREY's SUCCESS 

The Moody church of Chicago is known all over 
Christendom. During the eight years that Dr. R. 
A. Torrey was pastor of that church, more than 
two thousand members were received into it, and 
other thousands who had been won to Christ in that 
church joined other churches. The secret of this, 
and of the continued great work of that church, 
lies in the persistent personal work of the members. 

During Dr. Torrey's great meetings in Birming- 
ham, England, when nearly eight thousand came to 
Christ in one month. Dr. Torrey himself has said 
that the great results were made possible because 
of the personal work that accompanied the 
preaching. 

spurgeon's church 

We have all marveled at the great numbers 
brought to Christ under Spurgeon's wonderful min- 
istry, and the most of us have supposed that of 
course it was Spurgeon's preaching. But that was 
only a part of the secret. The other part of it 
was the fact that once a year, for many years, 
three thousand and more of his members came for- 



112 Every- Member Evangelism 

ward in a church service, and, in a most solemn 
pledge, took his hand in token that for another 
year they would together give themselves to the 
work of taking Christ to the lost. 

The result was that Spurgeon never stood up to 
preach without looking into the faces of scores of 
unsaved people to whom his own members had 
been witnessing to Christ in their own homes, and 
who had had the demand for salvation sufficiently 
aroused to come to the church services to get that 
demand satisfied. Like Peter's sermon on the Day 
of Pentecost, Spurgeon's sermons were the climax 
of the witnessing to Christ that had preceded, and 
the private witnessing, reaching its climax in the 
public testimony, bore a wonderful harvest for God. 

Who could not preach in power in an atmosphere 
created by such a passion for the lost, and who 
could not be a soul-winning preacher with three 
thousand Christians backing him with the kind of 
praying and personal work that such a passion 
produces ! 

A PITTSBURGH EXPERIENCE 

Among the many practical illustrations of the 
working of this divine Program which have oc- 
curred in the writer's ministry, none has ever been 
more striking than one which occurred in Pitts* 
burgh, Pennsylvania, a few years ago. 

For many weeks he had been stated supply of a 
church in the city. Some things had been said 
about the preaching to a young Scotchman by one 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 113 

of the members that had made him determine to 
come and hear the preacher. The young man was 
tinder conviction of sin, but his friend could not 
get him over the line. 

One Sunday night in midsummer he was in the 
service — the only one he was able to attend that 
summer. The sermon announced required the use 
of the blackboard. After the people were all in 
and the service had begun, a storm broke, accom- 
panied by much lightning. Every time the light- 
ning flashed near by the electric lights grew dim 
and once or twice went out for a moment. 

Finally, just as the writer was ready to announce 
the text, the lights went out permanently, and no 
light could be provided except a couple of candles. 
A blackboard sermon was out of the question. So 
while the congregation sang and the candles were 
being placed, the writer sought the Lord for text 
and message, and the Holy Spirit gav^ him Pilate's 
question, "What shall I do then with Jesus who 
is called Christ?^ The text was chosen with no 
knowledge of the young Scotchman present, nor 
that any one under conviction was in the audience. 

During the progress of the message conviction 
was deepened, questions were answered, perplex- 
ities were cleared up, until, before the message was 
ended, that young man lifted his heart and silently 
accepted Christ, witnessing to it with great joy after 
the service. The personal work of his friend needed 
just the message of that service to bring conviction 



*Matt. 27:22. 
9 



114 Every -Member Evangelism 

of sin to the climax of decision, and the Lord put 
the lights out in order to bring it about ! 

**God moves in a mysterious way. 
His wonders to perform; 
He plants His footsteps on the sea. 
And rides upon the storm!" 



A SEATTLE CHURCH 

One of the most remarkable illustrations of the 
practical working and certain fruitage of the divine 
Program is in the history of the First Presbyterian 
church in Seattle, Washington, Dr. Mark A. Mat- 
thews, pastor. 

The city is divided into thirty-two districts, every 
district thoroughly officered for the purpose of hav- 
ing the work systematically done. 

Among the obligations that the members take 
when they come into the church is the vow that 
they will do all they can to bring others to Christ, 
and into the church. 

And this work is seriously undertaken. Not only 
are the members constantly seeking the lost who 
live in Seattle, but when a new family moves into 
any section of the city, within a short time some 
member of that church is in the home giving them 
cordial welcome to their services, and opening the 
way for further personal work if they are not 
Christians. 

The result is that at the beginning of 1920 there 
were about seven thousand members in that church, 
854 of them — a good-sized church in itself — having 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 115 

entered the membership during 1919, of whom 545 
came on confession of faith. 

Is there any reason why any church anywhere 
should not be reaping a similar harvest? None 
whatever except that the harvesters are not out in 
the harvest field at work. And this is the crime of 
the professing church to-day. While we are beg- 
ging the Lord to send the sheaves in to be gathered, 
a ripened harvest is going to eternal waste because 
the laborers are not going out into the field to 
gather it in. 

There had just been a fearful storm that had 
utterly ruined a splendid crop of grain. Other 
crops all about had been gathered before the storm 
struck, but this one could not be harvested for lack 
of help. 

The owner of the crop stood at the fence, after 
the storm had passed, looking at his ruined harvest, 
his face a picture of sadness and dejection. 

A stranger coming along the road came up to the 
fence and stood in silence for a moment beside the 
farmer. 

Then he said, "It's a pretty sad sight, isn't it?** 

The owner said, "You would think it was sad 
if it was your field." 

"Why didn't you harvest it before the storm 
came?" asked the stranger. 

"Because I couldn't get any harvesters," was his 
sad reply, as he turned on his heel and went to the 
house. 



116 Every- Member Evangelism 

WHERE ARE THE LORD's HARVESTERS? 

If you who read these pages are a professed fol- 
lower of Christ, and yet you are not out in the 
harvest field laboring to gather the harvest before 
the storm comes, the words of the late Charles M. 
Alexander, the great song leader, are for you. He 
said, "Anybody who is not doing personal work 
has sin in his life. I don't care who you are — 
preacher, teacher, mother, father — if you are not 
leading definite people to a definite Saviour at a 
definite time, or trying hard to do so, you have 
sin in your life." 

If this is true — and it certainly is, for disobedi- 
ence to the Great Commission is sin — what a weight 
of guilt is resting on a multitude of Christians in 
the Church to-day! 

The preceding illustrations of what happens when 
a church even approximates obedience to the Great 
Commission are a terrible condemnation of those 
guilty Christians in every church who are content to 
live within daily reach of multitudes of lost men and 
women without ever making a direct personal efifort 
to rescue them. Oh, that the Church might be so 
aroused that she would literally follow the Pro- 
gram of the risen Lord according to the pattern of 
the Day of Pentecost! Then would we see the 
world-wide revival that many have so long been 
praying for. Then would the harvest be gathered 
before the storm breaks and it is eternally too late. 

"The time will come," said a prominent minister 
to his morning congregation in which were many 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 117 

well-known manufacturers, *'when all that will be 
left in the created universe will be two things: on 
the one side, a heap of ashes ; on the other, a myriad 
million of undying souls saved or lost. In the ash 
heap will be all your machines, your gold and your 
silver, your stocks and your bonds, your shops and 
your lands. In the midst of the myriad million 
souls will be the men and women who have toiled 
for you. What will you have to say to them before 
the Great White Throne?'' 

What will you who read these lines have to say 
to the lost you might have won to Christ ? 

We close this chapter as it was begun. The 
cross must come off from our church spires, our 
necklaces, and our watch chains and get into our 
lives. We must come to an end of our selfish 
unwillingness to dedicate ourselves to soul-winning, 
and accept the brand marks of the cross in our 
lives that we may bear them about with us wher- 
ever we go. We must put ourselves where we can 
preach a crucified Saviour by daily living the cru- 
cified life. Then will the fragrance of our lives 
win the lost to listen to our testimony to him who 
is the chiefest among ten thousand and the one alto- 
gether lovely. 

Dr. George W. Truett, of Dallas, Texas, tells 
what the brand marks of the cross did for those who 
beheld them on an occasion when he was raising 
the money to dedicate a church building. 

The amount to be raised was $6,500. After what 
he calls the slowest, most reluctant, most Christ- 



118 Every -Member Evangelism 

shaming effort to raise money he ever witnessed, 
they stopped at three thousand dollars. 

After a long pause, Dr. Truett said, ''What do 
you expect of me? I am your guest. I do not 
happen to have the other $3,500. What do you 
expect of me?" 

Then there arose a little woman back in the audi- 
ence, plainly clad. 'There was a surpassing pathos 
in her voice," says Dr. Truett, "as looking past me 
to the young man at the desk who was taking the 
names — her husband — she said, 'Charley, I have 
wondered if you would be willing for us to give our 
little cottage, just out of debt. We were offered 
$3,500 in cash for it yesterday. We were told we 
could get it at the bank any time in ten days, if we 
chose to make the trade. Charley, I have won- 
dered if you would be willing for us to give our 
little house to Christ that his house may be free. 
When we remember, Charley, that Christ gave his 
life for us, I wonder if we ought not to give this 
little house to him/ 

"The fine fellow responded in the same high spirit 
with a sob in his voice, saying: 'Jennie, dear, I 
was thinking of the same thing.' Then looking up 
at me with his face covered with tears, he said, 
'We will give $3,500.' 

"Then there followed a scene beggaring all de- 
scription. Silence reigned for a minute, and then 
men sobbed aloud, and gentle women and men 
standing around the walls, who a dozen minutes 
before had shut their lips with scorn and contempt 



This Program Will Reach the Lost 119 

for a church halting and defeated, sobbed aloud, 
and almost in a moment provided the $3,500." 

That was wonderful enough to have stopped 
right there, but the most wonderful part of the 
whole scene followed after the money was raised. 
For ''without invitation," continues Dr. Truett, 
''there came down every aisle to where I stood men 
and women, saying, 'Sir, where is the Saviour, and 
how can we find him ?' " 

The Christ of the cross had been lifted up in two 
crucified lives, and he had drawn men unto him- 
self as he had promised. 



Part III 
THE DIVINE POWER 



INTRODUCTORY 

IN the previous pages we have had a glimpse of 
the desperate condition of an indifferent Church 
and the appalling need of a lost world. 

We have found also that to follow the Program 
which the Lord laid out for his people is the only 
possible method of correcting the growing ills in 
the Church and of meeting the needs of the lost 
around us. 

But this method is not being followed, in spite 
of the fact that it is simplicity itself, and in spite 
of the most earnest efforts of many godly ministers 
to get their churches to do so. Churches every- 
where will follow other programs with enthusiasm, 
but not this one. What is the reason? 

The answer is not far to find. This Program is 
altogether divine, and so it is impossible to carry 
it out except by divine power. Those who attempt 
to work by this method are shut up to the power 
from on high in order to get spiritual results. Noth- 
ing else will bring such results, and many are un- 
willing to pay the price for that power. It is too 
high for them, for it is nothing short of complete 
death to all we are and have. 

120 



Introductory 121 

A man had given himself to Christ for Africa. 
A friend said to him, 'Isn't it dangerous to go 
so far away from civilization, where you will have 
no help and no medicine in sickness? Aren't you 
afraid you'll die?" 

'*I died when I decided to go," said the mis- 
sionary. 

In precisely the same way must every Christian 
die when he decides to go into his own personal 
world — his missionary field — to take Christ to the 
lost. And the present unspiritual, worldly, pleasure- 
loving atmosphere of the Church makes this price 
seem impossible. 

THE REASON FOR SUBSTITUTE PROGRAMS 

This is why we are so busy making and follow- 
ing human programs. For to follow the divine 
Program requires us to pay a price that even many 
leaders in the Church seem unwilling to pay. And 
so we busy ourselves with programs of civilization, 
education, social service, and a dozen other by- 
products of evangelism, and let straight-out per- 
sonal work for lost souls go, never seeming to 
realize that when we stop evangelizing the by-prod- 
ucts will disappear in spite of all we can do to 
continue them. 

Substitute programs are no new thing. Satan 
presented no less than three different ones to Christ 
in the wilderness temptation, by at least one of 
which he guaranteed world-conquest. And substi- 
tute programs accompanied by the same guaranty 



122 Every -Member Evangelism 

are being presented to the Church to-day. Shall 
we fall where our Lord stood? He turned from 
all of them and went to the cross ! *'He saved 
others ; himself he cannot save/'^ Shall we save 
ourselves from the cross? Then others we cannot 
save ! 

NOT PROGRAMS BUT POWER 

It is not programs we lack, it is power! The 
Lord has given us our Program, and it is an insult 
to him to attempt to make any other. We have 
nothing to do but to follow it. 

In the previous pages we have sought to trace our 
trouble back step by step in the hope of finally 
reaching the root difficulty. We are now at the 
very heart of it. We are not following the Lord's 
Program, and this is the reason for our failure. 
We are not possessed by the power from on high, 
and this is the reason we are not following the Pro- 
gram. And we are not willing to go to the cross, 
and this is the reason we are not possessed by the 
power from on high. 

In many discussions of personal evangelism the 
heart of the matter seems to be left out. The im- 
pression is too often left that the Lord's command 
to go after the lost ought to be enough for any 
Christian. But it is not enough! The Great Com- 
mission is sufficient authority, but it is not sufficient 
motive. It is not the imperative of an external 
command that sends us after the lost, it is the im- 



»Matt. 27:42. 



Introductory 123 

pulse of an indwelling Presence. We may be com- 
manded forever to take the Gospel to the lost and 
it will never move us, but when we are fully pos- 
sessed and controlled by him whose life it was to 
seek and to save the lost, we shall go, command 
or no command. Back of all successful work for 
the lost is an inward spiritual impulse; and back 
of the impulse is the Holy Spirit who reproduces 
Christ in us; and the brand mark of it all is the 
cross, the living experience of which must both 
enter and control the life before we are fit for 
service. 

We shall therefore consider the divine motive 
power behind obedience to the Great Commission. 
It is Christ himself, empowering us to live by his 
indwelling Hfe, and impelling us to witness by his 
overflowing love. As we seek the significance of 
his indwelling life working in us, both the mean- 
ing of the cross and the method of taking it into 
our personal experience will unfold before us. Then 
as we study the secret of his saving love flowing 
through us, the impelling power of his risen life in 
our lives, and the compelling power of his redeem- 
ing love over the lost will break upon our vision. 



CHAPTER I 
THE EMPOWERING LIFE OF CHRIST 

THE divine power is the life of Christ, cru- 
cified and risen again, dwelling in us. The 
beginning of this indwelling was what the disciples 
were commanded to wait for when Christ went 
away, and what they received on the day of Pente- 
cost. 

This does not mean that they were not born again 
until Pentecost, for there is plenty of evidence that 
they were, but that the Holy Spirit began his offi- 
cial mission on earth on that day. That official 
mission is the baptism of all true disciples into that 
one body through which Christ continues his work 
of seeking the lost, being not only the head direct- 
ing the work, but also the power by which the 
work is to be done; the directing and empowering 
being actualized within the Church by the Holy 
Spirit. 

The disciples were therefore commanded to tarry 
until the Holy Spirit came to begin his mussion of 
actualizing within them the indwelling Christ, and 
told that then, and not before, they would become 
effective witnesses unto him. They must be pos- 
sessed by the divine power before they would be 
enabled to obey the divine command and follow the 

124 



The Empowering Life of Christ 125 

divine pattern. Human mechanics are of no avail 
here; it takes divine dynamics. 

And* this is true to this hour. The Lord's people 
can no more obey the divine command until they 
have become possessed by the divine power to-day, 
than they could in the beginning. 

Now the only way to become possessed by the 
divine power is to come under the complete and 
constant control of the indwelHng divine life, and 
this is impossible without such a living experience 
of the cross that self will cease its activity and 
the life of Christ will be enthroned and put into 
active command. 

In a very simple and practical way, therefore, 
we shall seek to find what it means to be crucified 
with Christ, and also the method of receiving the 
cross into our experience. 

/. The Meaning of the Crucified Life 

Pride is the very essence of the natural man. It 
is seen in the sinner in his refusal to surrender, and 
in the Christian in his failure to keep surrendered. 
Self must keep doing something. To be compelled 
to cease all activity is the keenest pain to the flesh, 
because pride is cut to the heart. To be consid- 
ered incapable — so incapable that nothing self can 
do is acceptable to God — this is intolerable beyond 
expression. 

This gives us a clue to the meaning of the cross 
in experience. Absolute surrender to the will of 
God puts self out of activity; it consigns self to the 



126 Every -Member Evangelism 

cross where all its doing will cease. To do this is 
to enter the crucified life. 

Now, to apply this to our obedience to the Great 
Commission, in order to enter the crucified life we 
must first see and acknowledge that — 

i. We are Utterly Unable to Obey 

We are perfectly helpless — utterly strengthless, 
and therefore totally incapable of obeying the very 
least of the Lord's commands, and we certainly have 
no ability to obey this greatest of all his commands. 

( 1 ) We are unable because we are nothing. 

Many of us think that we are at least a little 
something, but as long as we think so we are not in 
the place of power for service. We are nothing, 
and we have nothing to exhibit to the world. And 
even if we had, the world would not be interested 
in seeing it, for they are saying, not, "Show us what 
you have,'' but, "Show us the Father, and it suf- 
ficeth us."^ 

Now if, to satisfy the heart yearning of a 
dying world, we busy ourselves in showing them 
our equipment, our wealth, our institutions, our 
programs, our creeds, our denominations, instead 
of showing them the Father through the indwell- 
ing Christ, it will be because our pride and self- 
sufficiency have not yet been swallowed up in utter 
abandonment to him who is our all. 

We must be so completely hidden away in Christ 
that the world will no longer see us, but the Christ 

»John 14:8. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 127 

who liveth in us. How can we approach men with 
a divine message when the human is all they can 
see in us? Like the shoe salesman who always 
wore the same goods that he sold and always ex- 
hibited them to all to whom he tried to sell, so we 
must always exhibit Christ to those to whom we 
testify of Christ; and this we can never do until 
we get to the place where we are willing to acknowl- 
edge that we are nothing and he is all. He must 
actually be our all in our daily conscious experience, 
or we can never show a dying world how sufficient 
he is for all their need. We must be able to show 
the goods we advertise. 

This we not only can do but will do from the 
moment we so yield that Christ can really live his 
life in us and thus become our character in daily 
living, and our power in daily service. This is the 
life **hid with Christ in God." This is the Hfe in 
which we are literally nothing and he is all. This 
is the life through which the world can see him 
who reveals the Father. 

(2) We are unable to obey because we can da 
nothing. 

This is a hard lesson to learn. It is so hard 
that many never learn it. Even those who are very 
sure they could never do personal soul-winning 
work with the lost are just as sure there are some 
things they can do. 

Many Christians have the false notion that if we 
will only do all we can, then the Lord will come in 
and add his strength to ours; but that we cannot 



128 Every- Member Evangelism 

expect him to do so until we have done all we can. 
Spiritual empowering to them is his great strength 
added to our little strength. Indeed, there are 
many who seem to think that the characteristic dif- 
ference between the lost and the saved is that the 
saved have accepted the help of the Lord which 
the lost have rejected. 

But the difference is vital. That is, it is the dif- 
ference between life and death. Christian living is 
not our living with Christ's help, it is Christ living 
his life in us. Therefore that portion of our lives 
that is not of his living is not Christian living ; and 
that part of our service that is not of his doing is^ 
not Christian service ; for all such life and service 
have but a human and natural source, and Christian 
life and service have a superhuman and spiritual 
source. 

This was precisely what Christ meant when he 
said, "Apart from me ye can do noihing.'^^ And 
Paul said ^the same thing from the opposite angle 
in the words, *'I can do all things through Christ 
which strengtheneth me.''^ And in ano^er place 
he explains how he can do all things through Christ 
when he says, "I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I 
live by the faith of the Son of God."^ That is, 
Christ lived his own life in and through Paul, and 
this was made possible through Paul's faith. 

*John 15:5 (Gr.). *Pliil. 4:13. »Gal. 2:20. 



^ 



The Empowering Life of Christ 129 

LIVING BY FAITH, NOT WORKS 

Think of what faith is and this will be plain. 
Faith is surrender to some one else to do for us 
what we cannot possibly do for ourselves. What 
we do for ourselves is all of works and not of 
faith. What we surrender to some one else to do 
for us is all of faith and not of works. 

Now how much of his life did Paul live, and how 
much did Christ Hve? Did Paul do his part and 
then let Christ make up what he could not do? 
Was Christ Paul's helper, or was he Paul's life? 
When Paul said, "To me to live is Christ,"^ did he 
mean, "To me to live is to be helped to live by 
Christ"? 

"The just shall live by faiM''' ; "Without faith it 
is impossible to please him''^; ^'Whatsoever is not 
of faith is sin^^^\ said Paul; and thus recognizing 
that faith and works cannot be mixed in the con- 
tinuance of the Christian life any more than they 
can in the beginning of it, he turned it all over so 
completely to Christ that he himself no longer lived 
it, but Christ lived his Hfe in him in response to 
Paul's faith. 

This is living the Christian life. Nothing else is. 
For any life that is not of faith is of works, and is 
therefore sin, and a life of sin is not Christian liv- 
ing. A person may be a Christian and still be 
attempting to live by works ; but he cannot do any 
real Christian living except by faith. 

And yet there are many Christians who are ready 

iPhil. 1:21. 2Gal. 3:11. ^Heb. 11:6. 4Rom. 14:23. 
10 



130 Every -Member Evangelism 

to say in prayer-meeting, with becoming modesty, 
so they think, *1 am still striving to serve the Lord 
in my poor, weak way." But the fact is, the Lord 
never asked us to serve him in our poor, weak 
way, and he is not the least pleased with that kind 
of service. He has asked us to surrender to him, 
and let him serve himself through us in his strong 
and mighty way. So long as we are strong enough 
to be even weak we are too strong for him. It is 
only when we become utterly strengthless that his 
strength becomes available. "For when I am weak 
[utterly strengthless, in the Greek], then am I 
strong,"^ says Paul. 

The conclusion of all this is that no matter what 
our natural endowments and training may be, obedi- 
ence to the Great Commission is impossible to all 
except those who realize that they can do nothing. 

(3) We are unable to obey because we can give 
nothing. 

This is especially the place where active and 
trained workers fail. What are all their training 
and experience for if not to equip them to give 
something to those whom they seek to serve in the 
Master's name? What is all their knowledge for 
if not to give to others? Why the natural endow- 
ments the Lord gave them if not to make their 
giving to others more effective? 

You recall that Christ imagined a man who had 
a friend come to see him, arriving at midnight, and 
he had nothing to set before him. So empty was 

^2 Cor. 12:10. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 131 

he of everything that he had to go to some one 
else for bread to set before his friend/ 

By that parable the Lord intends us to under- 
stand that we too have nothing to set before a 
famishing world, and if we set anything before 
them at all, we must go outside ourselves and our 
own resources to get it; and if we go to him who 
has the bread of life to give, we can get as many 
loaves as we need. 

THE REASON MANY FAIL 

Many a Sunday-school teacher will work hard on 
a lesson until the preparation is thorough and splen- 
did, and then go before the class with the feeling, 
''I certainly have something to give the class to-day. 
This is a great lesson, and I am going to have a 
great time giving them what I have dug out of it." 
And then how many times they will find no re- 
sponse from the class, and wonder why all the 
thorough preparation seems to go for nothing. 

And many a preacher will go before the people 
with the calm assurance that he has something 
worth while to give them now, whether he ever 
had before or not, and then find himself pumping 
and perspiring before an audience that he is con- 
scious is getting nothing. And he recalls more than 
one service when, because of unusual demands on 
his time, he has gone before them with nothing but a 
text, and to his own joy and the great refreshing 



il.uke 11:5-8. 



132 Every -Member Evangelism 

of his people, he has found himself the channel of 
a message from the very throne. 

And many a personal worker will prepare very 
thoroughly for an interview with some one he is 
seeking to lead to Christ, and then go to him with 
the feeling that what he has to give him ought cer- 
tainly to bring him this time, and then be compelled 
to leave with the feeling that the one he is after 
is farther away from Christ than he was before the 
interview. 

What does all this mean? Is it wrong to make 
thorough preparation? Should we throw all prep- 
aration to the winds and simply open our mouths 
and expect the Lord to fill them? 

Most emphatically, no ! It is not wrong to make 
the most thorough preparation possible. The fatal 
mistake comes in thinking that our preparation has 
given us something of our own which we can in turn 
give to others. It is pride of equipment that causes 
our defeat. And we shall fail every time we put 
confidence in our preparation, for then our trust 
is not in God. The most splendid ability and the 
most elaborate equipment are but the tray on which 
to serve the bread of life, and if we put confidence 
in the tray instead of in him who alone can put the 
bread on it, we are defeated before we start our 
serving. We have nothing, and the sooner we learn 
it, the sooner we shall come to depend utterly on 
him who alone has to give what this old hungry and 
starving world needs. If, after we have made our 
utmost preparation, we go to God and tell him the 



The Empowering Life of Christ 133 

tray is ready, and then ask him to put the bread of 
life on it that we may serve it, we will then be 
where the Lord can use our preparation to his own 
glory. 

It is precisely at this point that many workers, 
and all the shirkers, fail. The ever-present and 
power tul temptation of the workers is to depend 
on endowment, preparation, and equipment, thereby 
putting all their splendid capacities directly in God's 
way. And it is the constant temptation of the 
shirkers to imagine that none can become soul-win- 
ners except those who have an ability, experience, 
and preparation that they themselves do not possess, 
and therefore they are excused. But the fact is 
that neither the great capacity of the one nor the 
limited capacity of the other is anything to God 
except a vehicle on which to convey the bread of 
life to the famishing. That man of very limited 
capacity had it right when he said in his prayer, *'0 
Lord, thou knowest my capacity is very small and 
I can't hold much, but. Lord, I can overflow a 
great deal." 

WHAT THE CROSS IS FOR 

We can now begin to see what the cross is for. 
We are nothing, we can do nothing, and we can give 
nothing — not from the moment when we consent 
to surrender and become helpless before God, but 
all the time, whether we realize and acknowledge it 
or not. Imagining that we are something, and can 
do and give something of spiritual value, can never 



134 Every-Member Evangelism 

make these things facts. They are not now, they 
never have been, and they never will be facts. The 
only part of us that is not utterly helpless is the 
self-Hfe, and that is very powerful and active. And 
when there is prospect of its activity being ended, 
it seeks to avoid it by becoming very kind-hearted, 
benevolent, generous, and even religious; but it is 
utterly incapable of doing anything spiritual, and 
therefore it can do nothing but get in God's way so 
long as it is allowed the slightest activity. 

And so the cross is for that life that is something. 
It must be reckoned as on the cross, so that Christ 
can make its activity to end. We are nothing, and 
when we come to a complete end of all our doing, 
then the cross has begun to operate in our lives. 

We surely cannot have missed the illustration of 
this that Christ gave us in his life. As a man filled 
with the Holy Spirit he was constantly emphasizing 
his utter dependence on the Father. Whatever he 
was he received from God, and the words that he 
spoke and the works that he wrought all came from 
the Father. He was literally living the crucified 
life, because of which the Father was his constant 
enabling. 

The conclusion is that we are utterly unable to 
obey the Great Commission, This must be willingly 
realized and acknowledged before we can see the 
other side of this great truth, which is, 

2. Christ is Perfectly Able to Obey 

No one would think of denying or even doubting 



The Empowering Life of Christ 135 

this, so long as we think of Christ in his own person. 
But when we seek to make a practical appHcation 
of it, and confess that he is perfectly able to do in 
us all that he requires of us, it immediately becomes 
another matter. We are perfectly aware that all 
his almightiness is available for us, but when we 
put it in the light that he is to do our obeying 
through us by his own power, it becomes a puzzle 
to many. Where do zt^^ come in ? 

CHRISTIAN LIVING ALL OF GRACE 

Stop and think a minute. Christ's ability on our 
behalf is available only on the basis of grace, and 
most of us know all too little about the meaning of 
grace. Grace means that God does it all while we 
consent. 

Paul speaks of Christ as the one *'Who is our 
life."^ Not "Who gives us life," but "Who is our 
life." And again we are told that God has "given 
to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son/'^ This 
is why it is that only he who ^'hath the Son hath 
life."' 

Now if Christ is our life, you cannot fail to see 
what bearing this has on our obedience. Whatever 
is done for, in, or through the Christian, his life 
must do it. If the life does not do it, it cannot 
possibly be done. Whatever is done for, in and 
through my physical body, is done by my physical 
life. In the same manner, whatever is done for, 
in, or through the Church, the body of Christ, he 
who is our life must do. Apart from him neither 



iCol. 3:4. n John 5:11. n joh^ 5.12. 



136 Every- Member Evangelism 

the body nor any member of the body can do any- 
thing; he himself says so. His body is as helpless 
as any body without life, or with life present and 
completely inactive. This must mean that whatever 
is done in a Christian in obedience to any of God's 
commands, Christ himself must do. And he does 
do it, when we consent, for he is perfectly able; 
Therefore, 

(1) Christ himself is our victory. 

When some harmful thing seeks entrance into 
my physical being, it is my physical life that warns 
me against it. When that which is harmful slips 
past the guards into the system, it is the physical 
life that rises up at once and concentrates all its 
forces to fight it and drive it out. And when vic- 
tory over harmful forces is won, it is the life that 
wins the victory. 

Even so is it with the Christian. And yet how 
few have ever learned it! When the enemy ta 
spiritual health seeks entrance, instead of instantly 
turning the temptation over to him who is our life, 
we set our jav/s, stiffen our muscles, and then fight 
with desperate stubbornness, meanwhile calling on 
our Life to help us, and finally go down to defeat. 
Of course ! There never is and never can be victory 
until we are at an end of all our effort and turn it 
over completely to him. When temptation comes, 
let him handle it. We are no match for Satan, but 
he is. Let him be the victory. 

And this old self-life that is within us — let him 
take care of that. We do not have to nail it to the 



The Empowering Life of Christ 137 

cross, nor take the stench ful thing into the dissect- 
ing room and carve it up piece by piece. He himself, 
through the Holy Spirit, is an end to all the activity 
of self, just as heat puts an end to the condition of 
cold. If you want the darkness driven out, simply 
give the light a chance. And if you want to have 
the self-life put out of business, turn it over to 
Christ and reckon on him. "Reckon ye also your- 
selves to be dead unto sin ("sin" in this passage 
means self), but alive unto God in Christ Jesus'';^ 
not living by any effort of your own, but living in 
Christ, his life doing the living in you. This will 
put self completely out of business, for all chance 
for even the slightest activity will be gone. 

Remember how Paul puts it when he is speaking 
of the works of the flesh. He does not say, Put 
away bitterness, wrath, anger, and so on, but ''Let 
all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, 
and railing be put away from you with all malice."^ 
Let Christ do it. If he cannot handle every form of 
the enemy's activity without our help, it cannot be 
done ! But he can, for he is able. 

(2) Christ himself is our character. 

He does not simply give us character, he is our 
character. Character is received, not achieved. 
Christian character is an indwelling Person. 

Those nine beautiful graces that go to make up 
normal Christian character — love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self- 
control, — they are all "the fruit of the Spirit.''^ 

iRom. 6:11 (R. V.). sj^iph. 4:31. sQal. 5:22-23. 



138 Every -Member Evangelism 

Not one of them is the fruit of the Christian. No 
Christian can produce any one of those graces, much 
less all of them, for they constitute the character of 
Christ, and therefore only he is capable of produc- 
ing them. But he does produce them in us by the 
Holy Spirit, when we consent. 

Note how his method of doing it leaves the whole 
responsibility for our character on himself. "We 
all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the 
glory — the character — of the Lord, are transformed 
into the same image from glory — from one level of 
character — to glory — to another level of character, 
even as from the Lord the Spirit/'^ 

There is nothing here of the ^'character building" 
we hear so mucn of these days. While we behold 
him, he transforms us. There is no effort here. It 
is all done by him. 

This is what spiritual growth is. We do not do 
the growing, he does it in us. Christ said, ''Consider 
the lilies of the field, how they grow."^ It is the 
life of the lily that does the growing. Just so it is 
Christ in us who does our growing, becoming within 
us one level of character after another as our capac- 
ity for him increases. While we do the beholding, 
he does the transforming. 

(3) Christ himself performs our service. 

He does it through us as we yield. He performs 
through us every bit of spiritual service that is ever 
done. If he does not do it, it is not spiritual service. 



12 Cor. 3:18 (R. V.). ^Matt. 6:28. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 139 

It IS imperative that we take in this great truth, 
for it is failure to apprehend it that keeps thousands 
of earnest Christians from active work for the lost. 
They think they themselves must perform whatever 
service is done, with Christ re-enforcing them by 
furnishing whatever they happen to lack. They 
do not at all grasp the fact that they have nothing 
and can do nothing, and that whatever is done 
Christ must do. 

Think of the vine and the branches. While the 
fruit grows on the branches, yet every bit of life that 
produces it comes from the vine. **From me is thy 
fruit found,"^ said the Lord in the Old Testament, 
and Christ illustrates how it is done by this wonder- 
ful parable of the vine and the branches, emphasiz- 
ing the fact that apart from him we can do nothing. 

All our soul-winning, then, he does as we let him 
use us in personal work. The burden of intense and 
agonized prayer that we feel for some lost soul is 
his yearning through us. The impulse to speak 
the words we say, no matter how simple they are, 
is his life expressing itself through us. All true 
spiritual service is according to his working, which 
worketh in us mightily. 

Do you recall that river of blessing of which 
Ezekiel writes in the forty-seventh chapter of his 
prophecy? As soon as it left the temple it started 
straight for the Dead Sea, healing and making 
fruitful on its way there all with which it came 
into contact, except the marshes. Observe! What 

iHosea 14:8. 



140 Every -Member Evangelism 

was it that did that healing? Was it the temple, 
or the waters that flowed from the temple? And 
when you enthrone Christ in your life, which is his 
temple, and the rivers of living water begin to flow 
from your inmost being, as he has promised they 
should, is it you yourself — the temple, or the waters 
of life flowing out through your ministry from 
Christ himself from which the healing comes? 

No, child of God, soul-winning is not your work, 
it is Christ's work through you. And so if you 
will put into his hand just what you have, whether 
it is the walking stick of Moses or the five buns 
and two fishes of the lad, he will fill you and your 
capacities with his power and perform his pleasure 
through your life. It isn't your equipment he is 
after, it is you, and when he gets you he can do 
anything he pleases through your equipment, 
whether much or little. You may be an impulsive 
fisherman like Peter, or you may be a splendidly 
cultured and capable scholar like Paul, but the im- 
portant thing to him is not your equipment, it is 
you. Not that the equipment is a matter of in- 
difference in our service. Far from it. Every one 
ought to have the very best possible equipment. 
But whatever of real spiritual service is done Christ 
does it, using our equipment whatever it is. 

A splendid illustration of this occurred in an 
evangelistic cam.paign the writer conducted in 
Cleveland, Ohio. The invitation was being given 
after the sermon, and there were perhaps a score 
of inquirers standing in front of the pulpit. Down 



The Empowering Life of Christ 141 

in the center of the main floor, in view of all, was 
an electric lineman above forty, under such con- 
viction that he was Hterally mopping the perspira- 
tion from his brow, though the temperature was 
normal. Many were praying for him. Presently 
a lad of twenty came from a distant part of the 
room, sat down by the convicted man, a man who 
was regarded as a difficult case, and said a few 
simple words, and the man got right up and came 
to the front. 

Now see how the Holy Spirit brought that about. 
For months that man had frequently remarked to 
his wife that he didn't like the thought of so many 
linemen about his age being killed in their work. 
That thought was constantly with him. Now with 
this in view, the Holy Spirit moved that young 
man — who knew nothing of what the older man 
had on his mind — to say to him, **You know you 
have no lease on life. You don't know you'll be 
alive to-morrow morning. Now come on!" And 
the man came. 

How did that young man know what to say? 
The Holy Spirit, who knew what he had been im- 
pressing for months on the mind of that lineman, 
told him what to say. And he will impress any one 
who is yielded to him with what to say to any one to 
whom he leads him. All he wants is our willing- 
ness and he will pour his omnipotence out through 
our impotence. 

By this time the meaning of the crucified life 
must be fairly clear. In a word, it is utterly turn- 



142 Every -Member Evangelism 

ing our back on everything within us that makes us 
feel we are something when we are actually noth- 
ing, aocj turning our whole life over to Christ that 
he may live his own life in us through the Holy 
Spirit. It is an absolute abandonment of all our 
ideas, plans, ambitions, methods, possessions — 
everything that we are and have, that Christ may 
from henceforth be within us all he requires us to 
be, and do through us all he requires us to do. 
It is literally to die to ourselves that he may live 
within us. This is the life through which Christ 
can reach the lost. 

Now some reader is asking, How can one enter 
upon such a wonderful life as this? We will there- 
fore seek the answer. 

II. The Method of Entering the Crucified Life 

Christ said to his disciples, 'Tollow me, and I 
wnll make you fishers of men.'^^ He says the same 
thing to us with added spiritual emphasis. We are 
to follow him all the way to the cross in order to 
become fishers of men. *'It is enough for the dis- 
ciple that he be as his master."^ He blazed the 
path, he set the pattern, and he himself is the 
power to follow. 

We shall think first of following Christ to the 
cross, and then of fellowshiping with him in the 
cross. 

1, Following Christ to the Cross 

How may a Christian follow Christ to his cross? 



^Matt. 4:19. ^Matt. 10:25. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 143 

By dying to self in the same spirit in which he 
died for the lost. He went to the cross in order 
that he might be able to save. We must die to self 
for the same purpose. 

There is a uniqueness in his cross that we can- 
not share. As the sinner's substitute and saviour 
he is absolutely and eternally alone, being forsaken 
in the hour of his crucifixion even of his Father. 

But as the controlling principle of life, the cross 
is for every Christian, and we not only can but 
must follow him here if we are to be made fishers 
of men. 

We must therefore die to everything but the will 
of God, that thus God's will may come to be done 
in others through the service of our yielded Hves. 
We must not surrender to God in order that we may 
be happy. It is true that the crucified life is the 
only really happy life on earth, but if we seek to 
enter the life that we may be happy, we shall never 
enter. Our whole purpose must be, not our own 
joy, but the salvation of the lost. 

THE SACRIFICIAL AND SELFISH PRINCIPLES 

There are only two fundamental principles of life 
to choose between. One is the sacrificial principle, 
and the other the selfish. And these principles are 
mutually exclusive. When one dominates the life, 
the other is driven out. We can never become 
fishers of men if our lives are dominated by the 
selfish principle, and the sacrificial principle means 
the cross. 



144 Every -Member Evangelism 

One of those great passages where this truth is 
unfolded is the story of events surrounding Peter's 
great confession of Christ's deity.^ You recall 
that after asking the disciples what men were say- 
ing about him, doubtless to get their thought cen- 
tered on himself, he asked them, *'But whom say ye 
that I am?" 

Then came Peter's confession, "Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God," after which 
Christ lifts the veil a bit concerning the things that 
are before him, and indicates the disciples' relation 
to them. 

Then a most significant thing occurs. ''From 
that time forth began Jesus to show unto his dis- 
ciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and 
suffer many things of the elders and chief priests 
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the 
third day." 

Why did Christ speak of his coming death at the 
time when his deity was first recognized and con- 
fessed by his disciples? Why not at some time 
earher or later? Why just then? 

It seems as though he must have done it in order 
that the disciples might be able to associate his death 
with his deity in their thought of him, and might 
always be able to recall that the sacrificial principle 
lies at the very center of God's being, and is the 
spring of all his relations with created moral in- 
telligences. The cross was always potential in the 
heart of God before it became actual in the death 



»Matt. 16:13-25. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 145 

of his Son. Christ was the Lamb of God slain in 
his purposes from the unbegun beginning. What 
more natural, therefore, than to connect his death 
immediately with the disciples' recognition of his 
deity ? 

Then Peter, you recall, rebuked him and said, 
**Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto 
thee.'* But Christ turned to Peter and said, *Thou 
savorest not the things that be of God [the sacri- 
ficial spirit], but those that be of men [the selfish 
spirit]." 

THE PROGRAM OF THE CROSS 

Then he unfolds both the program and the prod- 
uct of the cross. 

*lf any man will come after me," he said, let 
him do three things. Let him first "deny him- 
self," second, let him "take up his cross," and third, 
let him "follow me." This is the program of the 
cross. Look at it a moment. 

Let him who would come after me "deny him- 
self." What does this mean ? Does it have refer- 
ence to those periods of self-denial that we fre- 
quently practise? Far from it! It does not mean 
denying things to self at all, but denying self itself. 
It means, "let him deny his self." 

But how can a man deny his self? 

Precisely as Peter denied his Lord. He said, 
"I don't belong to him; I am not one of his com- 
pany; I have nothing to do with him." And in 
exactly this same way we are to say to self, "I 



146 Every -^Member Evano:elism 



b 



don't belong to you; I want your fellowship no 
longer ; I will have nothing more to do with you !" 
We are to turn our back on self for good. We 
are from that moment to ''make no provision for 
the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.'*' 

The second thing is "take up his cross." This is 
where many miss the m.eaning. Some are so hope- 
lessly mixed on the meaning of the cross that they 
get it mixed with their burdens and their thorns 
in the flesh. We sometimes hear some earnest but 
confused Christian woman say that her cross is an 
unsaved husband ! It may be a grievous burden 
to her, or a thorn in the flesh that her husband is 
living a godless Hfe, but it is never her cross. It 
is those who have this conception that talk about 
their "crosses." There is no such thing. The 
word "crosses" cannot be found in the New Testa- 
ment. There is but one cross. 

What does it mean for a Christian to "take up 
his cross"? What is his cross? 

There is only one way to reach the meaning, and 
that is to find out what the cross w^as to Christ. 
For what it was to Christ it will be to us. 

It was the instniment of death to him. It must 
also be the instrument of death to us. 

But death in what way? Death to what? 

Death to the self we have just denied. 

Then the third thing he tells us to do is, "Fol- 
low m.e." Here again many earnest Christians are 
confused. They have the idea that the cross is a 

»Rom. 13;14. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 147 

burden of some sort that we are to shoulder and 
carry about with us all the rest of our lives, for 
Christ tells the disciple to take up his cross and 
follow him, and are we not to follow him through 
life? This is where the idea comes from that the 
cross is a burden. But nothing could be farther 
from the Master's meaning. Study his thought a 
moment. 

Where did he go with his cross? For we are 
to follow him with our cross to the place where 
he went with his. 

He went with his cross to the place of death. 

So if we take up our cross and follow him, where 
shall we go? 

To the same place. To the place of death. We 
can not fail to see that Christ meant this and noth- 
ing else, when we put all he said together. Notice 
just what he said. "If any man will come after 
me, let him deny himself [his self], take up his 
cross [the instrument of death to make the denial 
of self effectual], and follow me [to the place of 
death to self]." 

But some one reminds us just here that Christ 
told us to take up our cross daily. 

There is no difficulty here. When we have once 
accepted that power of the cross into our lives 
which brings into our experience our crucifixion 
in Christ in a transaction that is to be once for 
all, we are then to allow the cross to manifest its 
power in us daily that we may be daily kept in the 
place of death, that the life of the risen Christ may 
work in us and through us unhindered. 



148 Every -Member Evangelism 

Sophie the scrubwoman put it about right in one 
of her *'sermons." She said, *1 find dat de only 
vay to lead de right life is to commit suicide ef'ry 
day. You haf to die daily und go to your own 
funeral. You die to mean self, und den you haf to 
up und die to good self, und de sooner you die, 
de better you lif." 

Now if this exposition of these verses is not cor- 
rect, then you will have to explain the meaning of 
the very next verse; for Christ says immediately, 
"Whosoever will save his life [from the cross] 
shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life [on 
the cross] for my sake shall find it." 

THE PRODUCT OF THE CROSS 

Notice those words, ''shall find it." This is the 
product of the cross; and it comes only by follow- 
ing the program of the cross. It is a life yielded 
to the cross and therefore found again. 

Found again how ? How can a life that is given 
up to death on the cross ever be found again? 

Christ explains how it is found again in most 
striking fashion on a later occasion when he says, 
^'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit."^ That is, to follow the selfish prin- 
ciple and save the life from the cross is to lose 
it; but to follow the sacrificial principle and die on 
the cross is to find it in a vastly multiplied form. 
This is precisely why we must follow Christ all the 

ijohn 12:24, 



The Empowering Life of Christ 149 

way through death to self before we can reach the 
ground where multiplication and fruitage take place. 
This is what it means to follow him that we may 
become fishers of men. 

Now to sum up the cross principle, it is to lay 
down a life which may not in itself be wrong, but 
which, if we live, we shall live alone, in order that, 
laying it down, we may take it up again in ever- 
increasing fruitage. This is following Christ to the 
cross. 
2. Fellowshiping With Christ in His Cross 

How may we fellowship with Christ in his cross ? 
How may the crucified life become our daily ex- 
perience ? 

By faith alone. 

Faith means, you recall, that we trust some one 
else to do for us what we cannot possibly do for 
ourselves. 

Then recall that "the just shall live by faith/'^ 
which means that every minutest activity of the 
Christian life is performed by another within and 
through us while we trust. 

This means a permanent cessation of all our own 
doing, for the moment effort comes in at the door, 
faith flies out at the window. Faith and works 
can never dwell together in the same heart. When 
one is in, the other is out. 

This means also that we are even to cease our 
doing by faith, and not by effort. That is, we are 
not to try to make self quit its activity, for as long 

iRom. 1:17. 



150 Every -Member Evangelism 

as we make any effort whatever it will be impos- 
sible for self to quit. As long as we do anything 
to make effective our death to self in Christ, it will 
be impossible for self to die out of our experience, 
because it is by our doing that self stays alive. 

Christ, therefore, makes the cross a living ex- 
perience in our lives by himself being within us 
the power to cease from self as we trust him, and 
daily maintaining the death of self by his own life 
within us. 

But the moment we cease to trust him to do even 
the smallest thing, and start out to do it by our 
own effort, that moment self comes down from the 
cross and renews its activity in our lives. The just 
must live all the time by faith, and not a moment 
by effort. The normal Christian life is the effort- 
less life. So if you find it hard to live the Chris- 
tian life, you are trying to live it instead of trust- 
ing him to live it. The fact is, Christian living is 
not simply hard to a Christian, it is impossible. It 
is a supernatural life, and it therefore takes a 
supernatural Person to live it. 

THE EFFORTLESS LIFE AND SOUL-WINNING 

Now all this means that we can trust Christ — 
yes, that we must trust Christ to do every bit of the 
soul-winning through us that he requires of us, for 
he is able and we are not, Paul says that he is 
"able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we 
ask or think," and then he tells us what he does 
while we trust when he adds, "according to the 



The Empowering Life of Christ 151 

power that worketh in us''^ Not according to our 
own power or working, but according to his. 

Then in another place Paul tells us how this 
power puts us above every power that hinders. He 
speaks of it as *'the exceeding greatness of his 
power to US-ward who believe [not to those who 
make any effort whatever] , according to that work- 
ing of the strength of his might [not ours] which 
he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the 
dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the 
heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, 
and power, and dominion [then certainly over all our 
enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil], and 
every name that is named, not only in this world, 
but also in that which is to come; and he put all 
things in subjection under his feet [and therefore 
under ours] and gave him to be head over all 
things to the church, which is his body, the fulness 
of him that filleth all in alF'^; all of which means 
that through faith we fellowship with Christ in the 
literal working in our daily experience of his power 
over all things. 

Then in still another place Paul tells us how the 
power that puts us above the enemy also works in 
us the attitude of Christ toward the lost. He tells 
us how he has suffered the loss of all things, and 
counts them but refuse, that he might know 
Christ, *'and the power of his resurrection, and the 
fellowship of his sufferings, being made conform- 
able unto his death,"^ You notice that the resur- 



iE:ph. 3:20. 2£;ph. 1:19-23 (R. V.). ^Phil. 3:10. 



152 Every -Member Evangelism 

rection, in this passage, precedes the sufferings and 
the death. But you will notice also that it is the 
pointer of his resurrection that Paul speaks of. 
This is why it comes first; for it is the power of 
the risen life of the indwelling Christ that works in 
us perpetual fellowship with his sufferings and death 
for others. 

In one other passage Paul tells us how to receive 
the crucified life into our experience when he says, 
''Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ 
Jesus. ''^ Could anything be easier than to let the 
mind of Christ possess us? It is like letting air 
into a vacuum. Simply open a way of entrance, 
and the air takes possession. And Paul tells us 
also what the mind of Christ is in the words, *'Who, 
being in the form of God, did not reckon his equality 
wuth God a thing to be clung to ; but emptied him- 
self, taking the form of a servant, and was made 
in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion 
as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient 
unto death, even the death of the cross.'''' To open 
the heart to the mind of Christ, therefore, is to 
accept his attitude toward death to self that others 
might live. 

The application of all this to soul-winning is most 
practical. It means two very definite things. It 
means that by the power of the indwelHng life we 
die to all consciousness of our ability, and also to 
all consciousness of our lack of ability. 



iPhil. 2:5. spi^ii. 2:6-8 (1911 Bible). 



The Empowering Life of Christ 153 

CONSCIOUSNESS OF ABILITY HINDERS 

This brings before us a class of workers that it 
is very hard to get along with. It is those who are 
conscious of ability, real or imaginary. They may 
be very modest in manner, though sometimes they 
are not, but they know little or nothing of what 
It means to cease from themselves and let Christ 
do it all. They are among the hardest to work with 
in any soul-saving effort. All evangelists and 
evangelistic pastors know them, and they are 
among the thorns in their flesh in an evangelistic 
campaign. When a call is made for personal work- 
ers these people are not only ready to present them- 
selves, but they frequently seek to push themselves 
forward. The presence of such people in a con- 
gregation sometimes makes it necessary to avoid a 
public call and pick out workers in private. They 
are frequently very agreeable, though sometimes 
this is not true, and are often kind-hearted, and 
even gifted with a natural ability that is unusual. 

But, strange as it may seem, they are utterly un- 
fit for service, for self dominates them. One evi- 
dence of this is their ill-concealed desire to be at 
the front. And even if this is not much in evi- 
dence, they are always very sensitive and touchy. 
It is almost impossible to make any corrective sug- 
gestions to them, and altogether impossible to ask 
them to step aside from a piece of work they are 
bungling, for if that is done they are instantly in- 
censed and offended, sometimes to the point of 
denunciation and even withdrawal from the work 
altogether. 



154 Every -Member Evangelism 

WHAT TOUCHINESS SHOWS 

This is where they reveal the fact that self 
dominates. For self is full of pride, and is there- 
fore always easily offended and very touchy. 
Touchiness is self-conceit set with a hair-trigger, 
ready to go off at the least offense. And every- 
thing that even seems to raise the slightest ques- 
tion as to their ability is ample occasion for offense. 

With the crucified life it is just the opposite. 
There isn't any self to be offended, for self is on 
the cross and Christ lives within. Among the 
graces named in the fruit of the Spirit is peace, 
and the Word says, ''Great peace have they that 
love thy law, and nothing shall offend them.''^ And 
so if we are offended over being set aside, the fruit 
of the Spirit is not being borne in our lives, and 
that means that self dominates. 

When the power of the cross is working in our 
lives, we haven't any ability that we are conscious 
of to be discredited, for Christ is all, and so our 
feelings are not hurt in the least if we are not called 
on for any given service, or if we are asked to step 
aside from the service we are engaged in. For 
even though the leader we are working under may 
be making a mistake, we will not add another one 
to it by an exhibition of self. We can safely leave 
the leader with God while we, like our Master, are 
content to be of ''no reputation/'^ and to leave our 
service altogether with him who said, ''He that 
humbleth himself shall be exalted."^ 



»Psa. 119:165. *Phil. 2:7. »Luke 14:11. 



The Empowering Life of Christ 155 

It is very hard for a self that is conscious of 
ability to quit and go to the cross, especially if that 
ability is being conscientiously used in what is be- 
lieved to be the service of God. Look at Saul of 
Tarsus. In birth, natural ability, training, position 
and correct living, he was at least on a level with 
the best of his day. But in the use of his great 
-ability, in spite of the fact that he lived in all good 
conscience before God, he was utterly dominated by 
self. Conscious of his own ability, he rushed on 
so madly in doing what Saul dictated that he had 
no ear to hear what God dictated, until God was 
finally compelled to smite him down by the road- 
side to make him hear. 

But look at the change after he was born from 
above and so filled with Christ that he no longer 
lived but Christ lived in him. He calls himself 
the "chief of sinners,"^ because although he was 
given perhaps the greatest advantages of any man 
of his day, yet he allowed those very advantages 
to make him so unresponsive to God that he had 
to have a vision from heaven before he would get 
his eyes off from his own ambitions and on to 
Christ. 

Notice what he does with his great ability after 
he is surrendered to Christ. After saying, "If any 
other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might 
trust in the flesh, I more," and then after naming 
the things in which he might have confidence, he 



11 Tim. 1:15. 



156 Every -Member Evangelism 

says, "What things were gain to me, those I counted 
loss for Christ, . . . and do count them but 
dung, that I may win Christ, . . . that I may 
know him, and the power of his resurrection, and 
the fellowship of his sufferings, being made con- 
formable unto his death."^ This means that he 
died to all his natural ability and equipment that he 
might lose all dependence on them and depend on 
Christ alone, and that thus Christ might use them 
in the power of his risen life. Paul was nothing; 
Christ was all. 

When those who have any natural ability and 
training get to this place, they will henceforth be 
the great joy of all leaders in soul- winning work. 

But it is so hard to die to our ability that we 
cannot do it. But Christ is able, and he will work 
it in us if we simply consent and reckon on him. 

CONSCIOUSNESS OF INABILITY HINDERS 

There is also another class that it is equally hard 
to deal with. It is that great company of Chris- 
tians who are so painfully conscious of their lack 
of ability that they will never make the first attempt 
to take Christ to a lost soul. They are everywhere. 
Their name is legion. And they are the heart- 
ache of many an evangelist and pastor. 

They are the quiet but earnest and active Chris- 
tians who are usually ready for almost any service 
except personal work. They are self-conscious be- 
cause they think their natural inability and lack of 

»Phil. 3:4-10. 



The iimpowermg Life of Christ 157 

equipment and training make them altogether in- 
capable of doing such an important work as that. 

But, strange as it may seem, these people also 
are dominated by self. Self has so twisted theii: 
vision of God that they have come to have a very 
strange and impossible God. He is most unreliable, 
at least in one thing. He will unmistakably move 
them to speak to certain unsaved souls and seek 
to lead them to them. By so much, therefore, he 
is with them. Then he will give them his encour- 
agement and presence all the way to those unsaved 
souls. And so by that much more he is with them. 
Then just as they start to say something for their 
Master to lead these souls to accept him, strangely 
enough this God of theirs will suddenly back out 
from under them and leave them altogether to their 
own resources. Their limited resources are reason 
enough, therefore, for their never venturing on that 
work. It must be left to those whose resources 
are adequate. 

Nothing but the activity in our lives of a guilty 
and sinful self could ever move us so to dishonor 
our Lord ! It is because our eyes are on ourselves 
and not on him that we are ever capable of thinking 
such a thing. 

When did the Lord ever desert his obedient ser- 
vant? When did he ever leave us to our own re- 
sources in the doing of his work? What has either 
our ability or lack of ability to do with complete 
obedience to his commands? 

His commands are always his enablings. He is 



158 Every-Member Evangelism 

the God who takes one to chase a thousand and 
two to put ten thousand to flight. He is the one 
who can take a worm and thresh a mountain, and 
use even the things that are not to bring to naught 
the things that are. He is the God who can use a 
shout to throw down the battlements of a city, and 
three hundred pitchers and torches to defeat an 
army of 135,000. And then we back up when he 
proposes to use us because we lack ability! 

We shall have to turn utterly away from this sin- 
ful self-consciousness before we shall ever be where 
God can use us. It makes no difference whether 
we have ability or inability, the Lord is able, and 
(that is enough! He will do through us what he 
requires of us, no matter what our equipment or 
lack of it. 

It IS something like this. In your watch are two 
springs. One is called the main-spring and the 
other the hair-spring. The hair-spring actuates a 
little oscillating wheel called the escapement. The 
escapement for what? For power. For what 
power? For the power of the main-spring. When 
does the power of the main-spring begin to es- 
cape ? Not when the escapement acquires some new 
or different ability, but simply when it goes to 
work ! 

Precisely so, Christ's life within us is the liiain- 
spring of our life and activity, and we are the es- 
capement for his saving message into the world — 
that message that is the pozver of God unto salva- 
tion to those who believe it. And so just as long 



The Empowering Life of Christ 159 

as we refuse to surrender to his power and go to 
work for the lost, just that long the saving power 
that is in the message cannot escape through us. 
But just the moment we go to work for the lost, 
utterly dependent on him because he is able, just 
that moment his power will begin to operate through 
us. 

This does not mean in any sense of the word 
that surrender to him will set aside our personality. 
He empowers our personality and uses just what 
we are and have. The power of the main-spring 
does not change the hair-spring, it uses it. The 
electricity does not change the nature or character- 
istics of the dynamo or the heater in the street-car 
when it takes possession of them, it acts through 
them according to their nature. So also does the 
indwelling Christ with us. 

This is the attitude toward Christ that puts self 
out of business so completely that we become en- 
tirely unconscious of both ability and inability in 
our consciousness that Christ is within us all he 
requires us to be, and to do, and to give. 

This is what it means to fellowship with Christ 
in his cross. It is to surrender to the power of the 
crucified life within us in a definite and deliberate 
transaction which we intend shall be both complete 
and final. 

This is not a special blessing once for all received, 
however, whether "second blessing" or any other, 
nor a special experience once for all enjoyed, 
whether "sanctification" or anything else, so much 



160 Every- Member Evangelism 

as it is a normal relationship once for all recognized, 
accepted and entered upon. This is the normal 
Christian life. Anything below this is sub-normal. 

HOW TO ENTER IN 

Now you are asking just how to go about it in 
order to enter upon the enjoyment of this relation- 
ship so that you may no longer live, but that Christ 
may daily live his life in you. 

By faith alone, and never by feeling. For the 
experience of the life that is Christ does not rest 
on a thrill of the nervous system but on a fact that 
faith reckons with. Therefore rest once and for 
all on the fact and do not look for an experience. 
You will have experiences, many and blessed, but 
they will always be the result of the reckoning of 
faith, and never the outgrowth of feeling. Feeling 
comes from following, and following is by faith 
alone entirely apart from feeling. 

What is the fact, then, with which faith is to 
reckon? 

The fact that our crucifixion to self does not have 
to be done at some point of time in our lives when 
we consent, but that it has been done already in 
Christ when we died in him on the cross, and that 
therefore we were crucified to self, to the world and 
to Satan the instant we were baptized by the Holy 
Spirit into Christ at the moment of our regenera- 
tion. By the Spirit we were then baptized into his 
death, and by the Spirit we were also then baptized 
into the power of his risen life. It is therefore 



The Empowering Life of Christ 161 

already a fact with which we are to reckon, that 
we are now dead to sin (self), and are now living 
unto God in Christ. 

But just how shall we go about it to reckon with 
this fact? How shall this fact become a living 
reality in our experience? 

Paul tells us when he says, "Let not sin [self] 
therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should 
obey it in the lusts thereof."^ 

But how can we prevent sin from ruling over us 
without making an effort against it? And the mo- 
ment we begin making an effort does not faith 
end? Where, then, can the reckoning of effortless 
faith come in? 

Paul solves this mystery of overcoming self with- 
out effort before he finishes the sentence. ''Yield 
yourselves unto God'' he says, *'as those that are 
alive from the dead/'^ Being alive in him we are 
simply to yield to him who is our life, and he him- 
self will not let sin reign over us. It is the fight 
of faith, not the fight of effort, because we are 
simply trusting him to do for us what we are help- 
less to do for ourselves. That is, while we reckon, 
he makes the crucifixion of self which was ours in 
him the moment we believed an actual reality in our 
experience, thereby setting us free ''that we should 
no longer be enslaved to sin."* 

In other words, just as the salvation of our souls 
from the guilt of sin was ours the moment Christ 
died for us, and became ours in fact the moment 



iRom. 6:12. ^Ro^n^ 6.13^ sRom. 6:6. 
12 



162 Every -Member Evangelism 

we reckoned it to be true and accepted it, so the 
salvation of our lives day by day from the power 
of sin was ours in Christ's death, and becomes ours 
in daily experience the moment we reckon that 
God has told us the truth and accept the fact. The 
fact of our complete salvation from sin and its 
power has been true since Calvary. The expe- 
rience and enjoyment of that fact becomes a glorious 
reality within us the moment we believe and ac- 
cept it. 

To enter upon this relationship with your Lord 
is therefore very simple. Get alone with him at a 
time when there will be nothing to disturb nor break 
in. Then in a most personal, intimate, and natural 
way, yield yourself, all you are and all you have, 
all you will ever become and all you will ever have, 
in a transaction that will from thenceforth put the 
government of your life upon his shoulder and the 
doing of your service upon his power. And then 
from that moment reckon on him. Follow him 
wherever he leads you, trusting him to be in you 
and to do through you all he requires of you. 
Never wait for feeling. Always act on faith. The 
responsibility is all his. Leave it there! 

And if self ever slips off the cross and becomes 
active again, as it surely will when you stop reckon- 
ing, confess it instantly, turn self over to him again, 
and take your former stand on the ground of a 
faith which lets him do it all because you can do 
nothing. This is the method both of entering and 
of continuing in the crucified life. 



CHAPTER II 
THE OVERFLOWING LOVE OF CHRIST 

THE divine power is not only the life of Christ 
crucified, dwelling in us, it is also the love of 
Christ risen, working through us. 

Among the wonderful things about our salva- 
tion, none is more wonderful than the fact that God 
not only does it all when he saves us, but that he 
even gives us the faith with which to receive his 
salvation. *Tor by grace are ye saved through 
faith''; he says, **and that [even the faith] not of 
yourselves: it is the gift of God."^ He leaves us 
nothing to do but consent. He does it all. 

Now if the faith with which we receive salva- 
tion is a gift, and if everything that salvation itself 
contains is a gift, this means that Christ is the 
source of all our Christian activity, the center and 
substance of which is love. 

Christ gave some intimations of this before he 
went away. He said to his disciples, **My peace 
I give unto you."^ Not a prescription for peace, 
but his peace. He himself was to be their peace, 
just as he was on the stormy lake, except that he 
was to be within them instead of simply externally 
present with them. 



»Eph. 2:8. 2John 14:27. 

163 



164 Every- Member Evangelism 

And so with every other grace. Ours, no matter 
how capable they may seem, always break down 
under any real test. A Sunday-school Superin- 
tendent stood on the platform in an East End Sun- 
day-school in London and saw his teachers prac- 
tically helpless to keep order as conditions in some 
classes approached pandemonium. He was just on 
the point of ringing the bell sharply and saying, 
*'The Sunday-school is dismissed; and don't come 
back again until you can behave yourselves T' But 
just before the impulse v/as yielded to, he suddenly 
lifted his heart, hardly knowing why he did so, 
and cried, 'Thy patience, Lord; I need it quick!'* 
And immediately a wonderful calm possessed him 
that gave him perfect patience and poise in the 
presence of the distracting disorder, and from that 
moment nothing that happened caused him the 
slightest feeling of impatience. His patience broke 
down under pressure; the Lord's never does. 

THE SOURCE OF LOVE FOR THE LOST 

The same thing is true of love, which lies at the 
heart of every Christian grace. The Lord said, 
not, ''Continue ye loving me," but, "Continue ye 
in my love/'^ Peter tried three times to tell the 
Lord he loved him, and made a miserable failure of 
it. But John had no trouble telling us that God loves 
us, and Paul tells us that he sheds his love all 
abroad in our hearts. It is impossible to manufac- 
ture sunshine, but it is perfectly easy to get out and 

»John 15:9. 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 165 

bask in God's sunshine. We love him because he 
first loved us. Our love for him is simply his love 
rising to its source and taking our hearts in on the 
way. 

All those nine graces beginning with love, joy, 
peace, are after all but love in its various phases. 
That is why it is called *'fruit,'' not "fruits," for it 
is one fruit, not nine. 

And then love — what is it? Is it a feeling, or 
an emotion, or a sentiment ? 

It is none of these things, nor all of them put to- 
gether. It is infinitely more. It is that deliberate 
and fixed attitude of the whole being which puts 
the best interests of the one we love above our own, 
no matter at what cost to ourselves. And so it is 
entirely independent of sentiment and emotion, for 
it lies altogether back of them. Sometimes our 
emotion may be in perfect harmony with our love, 
as when a parent gives his child a present, and 
sometimes it may be utterly against it, as when a 
parent gives his child a punishment. 

HOW TO LOVE OUR ENEMIES 

Now the divine love has no respect either for 
person or character. This is why Christ told us, 
as Christians, to love our enemies. For when we 
do that, our love will then reach all those between 
our worst enemies and our best friends. 

But can we do it? Do we love the uncouth and 
the disgusting? Do we love those who slander us 
and dehberately seek to injure us ? Do we love our 



166 Every -Member Evangelism 

enemies who go about to slay us? Is there a 
Christian anywhere who is doing it? 

Think carefully for a moment what it was that 
Christ commanded us to do for our enemies. He 
said, ''Love your enemies,"^ but he did not tell us 
we must like them. To like them would imply ap- 
proval of their character, and that would be impos- 
sible with all whose characters were wrong. He 
himself does not like the sinner, though he loves him 
so much that he gave all he had to save him. For 
love puts the best interests of the one we love above 
our own, no matter at what cost to ourselves, and 
this is what Christ did for his enemies, and what we 
are to do for ours. 

But we cannot do even that, reasonable and sim- 
ple as it sounds. No human being can love his 
enemy, even on that basis. When Christ com- 
manded a thing like that, he commanded an absolute 
human impossibility. But he who prayed, **Father, 
forgive them,"^ while they were driving the nails 
through hands and feet can do it, and by his in- 
dwelling life we can do it, because he is able to 
do it through us. 

And we never can know the joy of loving until 
we love our enemies in the power of his love. There 
is infinitely more joy in loving our worst enemies 
with the love of Christ, than there ever can be in 
loving our best friends with our own love. That 
medieval saint had experienced this joy when he 
said, *lt is so sweet to love my enemies that if it 

»Matt. 5:44. "Luke 23:34. 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 167 

were a sin to do so, I fear I should be tempted to 
commit that sin/' 

Now the love of Christ going out through us for 
the lost cannot leave us in a state of inactivity nor 
the lost in a state of indifference. We must act 
under its impulse, and they must respond to it, even 
if it is to reject it. And so when the love of Christ 
has possession of us, it will both impel us and com- 
pel the lost to action. 

/. The Love of Christ Impels the Christian 

After all that has been said about how Christ 
lives his own life within the yielded disciple through 
the Holy Spirit, we can now understand how 
Christ's love will impel us to go after the lost pre- 
cisely as it impelled him. We are also prepared 
to see that if we are not doing this, it is because 
his life is being suppressed within us by our un- 
willingness to yield to it. 

Now we can go on to the further truth that such 
an active outgoing of our lives for the lost as his 
love impels is the life risen with Christ. When 
Joseph of Arimathea put a grave into his garden 
in which he who went to the cross for the lost was 
buried, he very soon had a resurrection there. And 
when a grave goes into the garden of our hearts 
in which self is buried and all that belongs to it, 
we will also share the resurrection life and fruitful 
activity of our Lord. 

We shall study what the risen life is and what 
it does within us. 



168 Every -Member Evangelism 

1. Chrisfs Risen Life Overcomes 

When Christ spoke of the death of the grain of 
wheat, he went on immediately to speak of its resur- 
rection and fruitage. Death was not the goal; it 
was simply the pathway to the goal. 

This is a truth many miss. They are deterred 
from surrender to the cross because they do not 
see what is beyond it. They see only the seeming 
loss involved in crucifixion, and do not see the 
resurrection life and fruitage on the other side. 
The cross seems to them not the beginning but the 
end of all that is worth while. 

But when Christ was on his way to the cross he 
saw through to the other side, and seeing **the joy 
that was set before him" on the resurrection side, 
he ''endured the cross" willingly, looking down upon 
the shame as a thing not to be reckoned with, and 
is now ''set down at the right hand of the throne 
of God."^ And what he saw on the resurrection 
side he will cause us to see, if we will let him touch 
our eyes into spiritual vision. Right here is the 
secret of getting joy out of sacrifice. We need to 
see the cross principle, but that is only half of it. 
It takes the resurrection principle to complete the 
truth. 

TWOFOLD SALVATION 

This twofoldness of Christ's salvation is seen 
everywhere in Scripture. He saves us both out of, 
and into. By his cross he saves us out of self ; by 
his resurrection he saves us into service. By his 
cross we die to f ruitlessness ; by his resurrection we 



iHcb. 12:2. 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 169 

rise to fruitage. By his cross is ended that spirit 
of lovelessness that lets the lost all around us go 
into eternity without a direct efifort to save them; 
by his resurrection is begun that active operation 
of the divine love v/ithin us that impels us to spend 
our lives in rescuing the lost. Salvation is two- 
fold; not so much a first and second blessing as a 
twofold blessing; not so much a first and second 
work of grace as a twofold work of grace. The 
cross and the resurrection are always associated in 
New Testament doctrine, and they cannot be sep- 
arated in the Christian's experience. It is impos- 
sible for the power of the cross to enter the life 
without the power of the resurrection to be mani- 
fest also. While we are discussing the crucified 
and risen life separately, this does not imply sepa- 
rate experiences. They are the two sides of one 
great truth. 

It is quite true that one may receive the benefits 
of Christ's death and resurrection for him when he 
believes unto salvation, and may not receive the 
power of Christ's death and resurrection within 
him until a later day in his experience, though this 
does not need to be so. But when the power of 
the cross becomes a living reality in a Christian's 
life, the power of the resurrection is inseparable 
from it. 

SATAN CANNOT TOUCH US 

Now the risen life in Christ is the overcoming 
life. By the power of the cross we die to the 
enemy, and by the power of the resurrection we 



170 Every- Member Evangelism 

rise above the enemy. Satan cannot touch either 
the sonship of the saved one or the service of the 
surrendered one. The soul of the believer is for- 
ever safe in Christ, and the service of the soul- 
winner is beyond his reach in Christ. 

It is because our life is hid with Christ in God 
that it is beyond the reach of Satan. As some one 
has put it, "Satan cannot touch our life in its 
source, for God is its source and he cannot touch 
God. He cannot touch our life in its channel, for 
the risen Christ is its channel, and he cannot touch 
the risen Christ. He cannot touch our life in its 
power, for the Holy Spirit is its power, and he can- 
not touch the Holy Spirit. He cannot touch our 
life in its duration, for eternity is its duration, and 
he cannot touch eternity. And he cannot touch 
our life in its sphere, for heaven is its sphere, and 
he cannot touch heaven. The child of God is 
eternally safe in Christ." 

Moreover, Satan cannot touch the service of 
those who have gone by way of the cross into the 
risen life in the heavenlies with Christ. That 
working of the strength of the Father's might which 
he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the 
dead and set him far above all rule, and authority, 
and power, and dominion, and put all things under 
his feet, is also "the exceeding greatness of his 
power to usward who believe" — who live by faith 
— by which we are made to fellowship with Christ 
in his power over all the enemy. And so when 
Satan and the world call after us, their call must 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 171 

come through the grave of Christ to reach us, and 
it is too muffled to hear. And when self makes its 
appeals to us and thunders its intimidations at us, 
we are dead to self and do not heed. All those 
weak and childish excuses for our selfish and crim- 
inal unwillingness to go after the lost which come 
from the enemy are therefore things of the past. 
And so when we experience the power of his resur- 
rection in our lives, we will be in the place where 
nothing the enemy can do can deter or hinder us in 
the least from the work of soul-winning. 

Let every Christian assuredly know, therefore, 
that if there is anything whatever that is hindering 
him from this work, he is not experiencing the 
power of Christ's resurrection in his life, and by 
that much he is under the enemy's dominion. 

But there is no need for any Christian to be the 
tool of the world, the slave of the flesh, and the 
football of the devil, Paul tells us in Galatians 
5 :17, as Rotherham translates it, "For the flesh 
coveteth against the Spirit, but the Spirit against 
the flesh, — for these unto one another are opposed, 
lest whatsoever things ye chance to desire, these 
ye should be doing!'' And he says this in ex- 
planation of the previous statement, **By Spirit be 
walking, and fleshly coveting ye will in no wise 
fulfill.'* 

Dr. F. B. Meyer tells about going down in a 
diving bell. The passengers sat on a seat fastened 
on the inside of the bell. When they were low- 
ered, the water came up into the inside of the bell 



172 Every -Member Evangelism 

a few inches and then stopped, because the air held 
it down. The water was fighting against the air, 
but the air was also fighting against the w^ater, so 
that it could not do what it otherwise would. And 
the passengers did nothing but accept and enjoy 
the victory of the air over the water. 

Thus it is with every Christian who turns every- 
thing over to his Lord. The Hfe of the risen and 
indwelling Christ makes constant conquest over the 
flesh, and as long as the activity of the flesh is 
nullified by the life of Christ within us, neither the 
world nor Satan has any entrance into our lives, 
and therefore no power over them. 

This means that we are free for service. And so 
nothing the enemy can do can hinder us from a life 
of soul- winning. 

2, Christ's Radiant Love Overflows 

When we are set free for service, we are in the 
place where all eflFective witnessing for Christ is 
done. Our lives will furnish the indispensable 
background for our testimony, and our testimony 
will be *^in demonstration of the Spirit and of 
power."^ WTien the enemy loses his control over 
our lives, we can witness with great persuasiveness 
to those whom the enemy is holding captive at his 
will. For the doctrine of the cross becomes sur- 
passingly persuasive when illustrated by crucified 
lives, and the truth of the resurrection becomes glo- 
riously triumphant through those who are trans- 
figured by the risen life in Christ. 

11 Cor. 2:4. 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 173 

And when it comes to witnessing to Christ, in- 
stead of hesitating to take the Gospel to all the lost 
in our personal worlds, we cannot be kept from it. 
We shall not go after the lost because we are com- 
manded to, but because we cannot help it. We 
shall never run before we are sent, but we shall 
always go when we are sent. And if the enemy 
tries to prevent us from speaking in Christ's name 
— as he surely will, we shall turn him over to his 
Victor and go right on with our testimony. For 
the love of Christ will so constrain us — so bear us 
along and impel us — that we cannot but speak the 
things which we have seen and heard. 

When a disciple is possessed and dominated by 
the life of the risen Lord, he cannot keep still 
about him. And all the powers of earth and hell 
cannot make him keep still. He will go through 
every condition and brave every difficulty to tell 
about him. 

What an effect a little first-hand fellowship with 
the risen Christ had on those Emmaus disciples! 
There flamed within their hearts a strange and 
wonderful fire, even before they knew him, as they 
listened while he unfolded the Word by the way. 
And when they realized that he was their risen 
Lord, that moment they forget everything else and 
started out with the story, "He is risen !"^ They 
had just walked seven miles and a half from 
Jerusalem, but though night was now on, their 
weariness and the dangers of the road disappear as 

ilvuke 24:34. 



174 Every-Member Evangelism 

they hurry back over the same rocky road with 
their resurrection message. They had come into 
personal fellowship with the risen Christ, and the 
power of his resurrection had so transformed their 
lives that they could not wait till morning to tell 
the story of his triumph over death. 

Now if a short period of personal fellowship with 
the risen Christ has such an effect as this, what 
about the effect on those into whose lives the risen 
Christ comes as an abiding Presence? If the news 
was so good to those disciples that they must tell 
it in spite of weariness and danger and everything 
else that could hinder, what about those in whose 
lives the power of his resurrection is a daily ex- 
perience? If you can keep still about the Son of 
God, you give no evidence of any experience of his 
resurrection power in your life, and that means 
you are not surrendered to him. When you are 
living in the power of his risen life and walking in 
daily triumph over all the power of the enemy, it 
will be news too good to keep, and you will go 
everywhere telling it. It is hard enough to keep 
bad news, but when it comes to good news it is 
impossible to keep it. If the Gospel is really 
Gospel — good news — to you, you cannot keep from 
telling it. If you are not telling it, it is not good 
news to you] 

It is something like this. Touch the keys of an 
organ and it refuses to speak — as many Christians 
do. It has the breath within it, as much as there 
is in the room around, just as those who have been 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 175 

born again have within them the breath of life; 
but it does not speak. Now turn the power on, 
and every joint is strained and the whole organ 
cries out, Give me a chance to speak ! In the same 
way will a Christian cry out when the power of 
the risen Hfe has taken possession of him. Touch 
him on any side and he will speak of him who is 
mighty to save. 

Right here is the supreme need of Christians 
everywhere to-day! There can be no glad, spon- 
taneous obedience to the Great Commission until 
the power has been turned on. Then they will be 
like Jeremiah when he said, **I will not make men- 
tion of him, nor speak any more in his name. But 
his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut 
up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, 
and I could not stay/'^ Even when he tried to keep 
still, he could not do it. 

Dr. Chalmers visited a dying infidel in Glasgow 
twenty-one times and was refused admission every 
time. But at the twenty-second visit the infidel 
invited him in, because he wanted to see the man 
who could be refused twenty-one times and still 
keep coming. And then Dr. Chalmers had a chance 
to tell the dying man of him who can save. What 
if he had not continued calling! What if he had 
not been yielded to that indwelling one who kept 
him calling! 

A lady was calling on a minister's wife. She 
was told of a cultured family near by, none of 

>Jer. 20 ;9. 



176 Every- Member Evangelism 

whom ever went near church, and she said, "I will 
go and see them." 

"What excuse will you offer for calling?" asked 
the minister's wife. "Oh, yes; take this book," 
she said. "I remember hearing one of the young 
ladies express a desire to read it." 

"But I don't want any excuse," said the caller. 
"I want them to know I am interested in them." 

That visit resulted in the conversion and church- 
membership of three of them, and the regular 
church attendance of all of them. 

In speaking of it afterward, the mother said, 
"I never realized the danger we were in until I 
saw some one else — ^and that one a stranger — was 
concerned about me." 

Oh, for multiplied thousands of Christians 
through whose lives the radiant love of Christ is 
constantly flowing out to the lost! 

Now we shall study the effect of God's love on 
the sinner. 

//. The Love of Christ Compels the Sinner 

Contact with the love of Christ compels action. 
It is absolutely impossible to remain indifferent in 
its presence. Response of some kind is as certain 
as response in nature to the action of the sun. 

But the response which love compels is not all 
of one kind. It is of two opposite kinds, with no 
middle ground between. The soul that feels the 
love of Christ will respond either with a melting 
heart or with antagonism. Antagonism may 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 177 

change under pressure of love to the broken and 
the contrite heart, but indifference is impossible. 
Christ's love compels to one action or the other. 
Every true Christian wishes most devoutly that 
all hearts might be compelled to melt under pres- 
sure of the divine love, but so long as man can 
act in free will, he will be able to reject God's grace, 
in spite of all that even God himself can do to 
melt his heart to love. 

1. Love Compels Some to Rejection 

The lost want to be let alone in their sins. They 
have no desire to have conscience aroused, for its 
action is painful and intensely unwelcome. The 
demons of Christ's day on earth cried, "Let us 
alone,"^ and this is the cry of the sinners of all 
ages. This is precisely why the lost never will 
come to church until the miracle of Christ's com- 
pelling love draws them there. 

And Satan wants the lost to be let alone, and so 
he fills their time with everything that will crowd 
Christ out, and then keeps Christians from taking 
the Gospel to them. 

But love cannot let the sinner alone, any more 
than light can let darkness alone. This is why 
Christ, in love, commissioned every Christian to 
bring men everywhere face to face with his yearn- 
ing love, and this is why those who are filled with 
that love cannot help going with it to all the lost 
about them. Love simply cannot let the sinner 
alone. 



»Mark 1:24. 
13 



178 Every- Member Evangelism 

But the moment the pressure of Christ's love is 
brought to bear on the sinner, an issue is drawn. 
He must make a choice between two opposites. 
He must either crown Christ or crucify him. He 
cannot remain passive w^hen the issue has once been 
drawn. 

Right here is the supreme reason why we are 
commanded to be filled with Christ's love by the 
filling of the Spirit before we go to the lost. Be- 
cause if the testimony to Christ's love is presented 
apart from the exhibition of it in our lives, the 
lost are more likely to be antagonized than they 
are to melt. There will be some who will reject it 
in spite of its utmost exhibition, as they did when 
they were face to face with it in Christ himself, but 
what an unspeakable crime to presume to go to 
the lost when we are not filled with Christ's love! 
And what a more terrible crime yet to be so 
devoid of his love that we do not go after them 
at all ! 

Now if the lost reject the appeal of Christ's love 
when it comes to them through a love-filled life, 
they will treat those who present the appeal as they 
did the Son of God himself. His presence in the 
midst of wilful sinners stirred up an accusing and 
condemning conscience, and therefore caused them 
the most terrible and unmitigated pain known to 
the experience of sinful moral beings, and they 
fought him off. And so when he sought to do 
them good, they went about to do him harm. When 
he poured his blessings on them, they spewed out 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 179 

their curses on him. When he lavished upon them 
his unmeasured love, they let loose on him their 
sullen hatred. His pity brought nothing but scorn, 
his compassion nothing but cruelty, and his loving- 
kindness nothing but fiendish outrage. 

This is why the love-filled Christian, living with 
Christ in the heavenlies and seeking to save the lost, 
is sure to suffer the contradiction of persistent 
sinners. This is why *'all that will live godly in 
Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."^ And this 
is why the Christian who is not suffering persecu- 
tion for righteousness' sake gives no evidence of a 
godly and love-filled life. 

The aggressive and Christ-filled soul-winner, 
therefore, need not be surprised at persecution as 
though some strange thing had overtaken him, for 
those who refuse the appeal of Christ's love can do 
nothing else. Rejected love literally compels those 
who reject it to make every possible effort to 
quench its appeal. 

2. Love Compels Some to Acceptance 

There are some, however, who yield, thank God ! 
And when the lost break under the appeal and 
yield to his love, how it melts them! Nothing else 
can do it like the love of Christ. 

Our sympathy, our kindness, our love will never 
melt a sinner, but Christ's wilL What a tragedy 
when they cannot see it in us ! What a glorifying 
of our risen Lord when they can ! Do you see why 



>2 Tim. 3:12. 



180 Every- Member Evangelism 

it is that we must follow Christ all the way to the 
cross and to resurrection ground before we can 
have much success in soul- winning ? For it is only 
when we get here that we can literally compel them 
to come in. Perhaps we can best see why in the 
light of some illustrations from life. 

Dr. J. W. Mahood says that when he was pastor 
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, there was a little woman 
in his church in humble circumstances. She did 
not have much of what people call social standing; 
she kept a boarding-house. She had a number of 
young people boarding with her, and it was noth- 
ing unusual for her to say at the close of a noon 
meal, '^Before you return to your work, let us 
kneel down and ask God's blessing.*' And she 
would kneel with them and pray for each one by 
name. 

One day there came to her a book agent who 
was not a Christian, and this woman discovered it 
and set about to win her to Christ. At the close 
of a meal she said, "Now before you go to your 
rooms, let us kneel down and have prayer,*' and 
she prayed for each one about the table until she 
came to the young lady book agent, and then she 
prayed that she might become a Christian. 

When they rose, the young lady was in tears. 
This woman put her arms about her and said, 
'This is the soul I want for my Jesus," and drew 
her into another room and got down on her knees 
and pointed her to Christ, and that young woman 
was saved. 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 181 

She was always doing something hke that. She 
used to say to Dr. Mahood that she kept a board- 
ing-house to pay expenses, but her business was to 
win souls to Christ. She was impelled by that love 
that compels the lost to come in. 

The late Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman has told the 
story that not far from his home in Indiana, just 
across the state line in Ohio, there lived an old 
woman who was the terror of all who had ever 
seen or heard of her. She was finally arrested and 
sent to Columbus Penitentiary. 

She broke every rule of the institution, and they 
exhausted every form of punishment upon her. 
Times without number they had sent her to the 
dungeon, and for weeks at a time she lived on 
bread and water. 

Finally an old Quaker lady from the same part 
of the state asked permission to see her. The pris- 
oner was led into her presence with chains upon 
her hands and feet. With downcast eyes she sat 
before the messenger of Christ. 

The old Quaker lady simply said, ''My sister." 

The old v/oman cursed her, and then she said, 
*1 love you." 

With another oath the prisoner said, ''No one 
loves me T' 

Then the Christian woman came near, and tak- 
ing the sin-stained face in both her hands, she 
lifted it up and said, ''I love you, and Christ loves 
you." 



182 Every -Member Evangelism 

Then she kissed her first upon one cheek and 
then upon the other, and that broke the sinner's 
heart. Her tears began to flow like rain. She 
rose to her feet, and they took the chains oflf, and 
until the day of her death they were never put on 
again; but like an angel of mercy she went up and 
down the corridors of the prison ministering to 
the w^ants of others, a trophy of the compelling 
love of Christ. 

A QUESTION OF ETERNAL MOMENT 

One question only remains. Will you go? He 
has commanded it; he will enable you. Do you 
dare refuse? 

A young woman barely escaped with her life 
from the Chicago fire. After she was in safety 
she began to sob and moan. Those around her 
assured her that she was perfectly safe, and asked 
her why she wept. 

She said, "Yes, I know I am safe, but I didn't 
save anybody else!'* 

Then they said to her, **How could you? You 
just barely escaped with your own life.'' 

*'Yes," she said, *1 know that, but I didn't even 
try r 

It weighed upon her mind until they finally took 
her to the insane asylum moaning, *1 didn't even 
try! I didn't even try!" 

"Must I go and empty handed, 
Thus my dear Redeemer meet? 
Not one day of service give him, 
Lay no trophies at his feet?" 



The Overflowing Love of Christ 183 

''He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same 
bringeth forth much fruit/'^ 

**Abide in him; that when he shall appear, we 
may have confidence, and not be ashamed before 
him at his coming."^ 

Dr. W. Leon Tucker tells of how, in New York 
City, there was a great street demonstration in 
which twelve thousand people marched. The most 
remarkable thing in the procession was three sight- 
seeing motor cars packed full of men, women and 
children. In one of them was a Judge of the 
Court of Appeals, and in the last one was a ragged 
street boy. 

On the sides of the cars it said, "These people 
have all been saved from burning buildings by New 
York City firemen," and then back of the cars 
marched the men who had saved them wearing 
their medals, while hundreds of thousands of people 
cheered them. 

Think of the eternal joy that will thrill the 
hearts of those who, following their Lord and dis- 
regarding the consequences, have spent their lives 
*'pulling men out of the fire"^! 

ijohn 15:5. ^l John 2:28. ^Jude 23. 



APPENDIX 

EVERY-MEMBER EVANGELISM IN 
OPERATION 

THE mechanics of the Great Commission Pro- 
gram which Christ gave his Church to follow 
during this Age consist of two very simple and yet 
completely comprehensive items. 

The first is the division of territory for system- 
atic evangelism. 

The second is the division of labor for the com- 
plete evangelization of the territory. 

A few suggestions as to how to divide any given 
territory, and how to organize all the membership 
of any given church for continuous every-member 
evangelism are given in the hope that they may 
prove of real value to many churches and pastors. 

In getting every-member evangelism under way 
in any given field, it is of the utmost importance 
that it should be started, not simply in the right 
manner, but especially at the right time. 

In the average church there can be no better 
time in which to get this m.ethod of work into 
operation than in connection with a revival cam- 
paign. In fact, the spiritual condition of most 
churches almost requires that a work of this sort 
be started at such a time if it is to be undertaken 

184 



Organizing for Revival Meetings 1^5 

in dead earnest by any great number of the 
members. 

As a preparation for a series of meetings, tem- 
porary organization of the field, with a view to per- 
manent organization later, can be made not only to 
produce wonderful results in reaching the lost in 
the meetings, but can also be made to produce 
such an atmosphere in the church that the young 
converts will not be laid away in cold storage after 
they come into membership, but will be set at once 
to obeying the Great Commission in their own per- 
sonal worlds. 

The suggestions which follow for organizing a 
field for meetings can be adapted to any sort of 
field, and can be made a permanent fixture in 
church life, providing the proper method is used 
for turning the temporary organization into per- 
manency. 

ORGANIZING FOR REVIVAL MEETINGS 

Firstj determine on the boundaries of your field, 
taking in as much territory as the church can rea- 
sonably hope to cover when the work is fully or- 
ganized and the plan becomes permanent. 

Second, divide the territory into sections, rang- 
ing in size from a city square to any size you judge 
can be most perfectly cared for, also having some 
regard for the future population of sections not 
now entirely built up. 

Third, assign your entire membership to the vari- 



186 Every -Member Evangelism 

ous sections of your field, spreading them over the 
territory proportionately to the population of each 
section, and assigning them either to the section 
they live in, or one as near their own as possible. 

Fourth, select a chairman for each district, pick- 
ing out those with the greatest ability to get things 
done, and having special care that they are spir- 
itually minded and leaders in the work of soul- 
winning. Also select the chairman for the whole 
organization. This chairman should not be the pas- 
tor, if it is possible to avoid it, but the most spir- 
itually minded executive among the laymen of the 
church. The reason for this suggestion is that the 
pastor has enough to do that no one else can do, 
and also that if the pastor is chairman, when he 
goes the work is likely to disintegrate between pas- 
torates, to say nothing of the possibility that the 
next pastor may not have the executive ability nec- 
essary, or may throw that method of work out 
altogether and put in something of his own prefer- 
ence. If a layman is chairman the work will not only 
be kept up between pastorates, but the church will 
see to it that they get pastors who will fit into a plan 
that is a permanent fixture in their church life. 

Fifth, call all the adult members of every section 
together at some time convenient to all, and lay 
plans for a thorough canvass of the field. 

Sixth, canvass the field, taking a religious census, 
and using all the adult members possible in their 
own districts to do the work. It is of much im- 
portance that as many adult members as possible 



Organizing for Revival Meetings 187 

should be used in this work, for they need to be- 
come familiar with their own districts to be most 
effective in the work that will follow the canvass. 

Some churches make up a "constituency list'' 
instead of making a canvass, but this method should 
be used only when a canvass is absolutely impos- 
sible, as the "constituency list'' method leaves a 
great portion of the field entirely untouched, and 
is not in strict accord with the Great Commission. 

A church in a large city in which the writer 
held meetings, located in a residential section of 
the city, sent out seventy members, two by two, 
who made over ten thousand calls in preparation 
for the meetings. The names they took in their 
census of those belonging to other denominations 
were turned over in duplicate to their respective 
pastors, and they themselves had a list of their 
own of over a thousand unsaved belonging in their 
own "constituency" when the meetings started. 
The effect on the church of the canvassing alone 
was very evident, and the pastor remarked time 
and again during the meetings that the church had 
been completely transformed. There was an at- 
mosphere all through the campaign that is seen 
only in the most powerful meetings. 

Seventh, list all the non-members separately. For 
convenience they may be classified something like 
this: 

(1) Those in the homes of your own members. 

(2) Those in the homes where you have Sun- 
day-school scholars but no members. 



188 Every -Member Evangelism 

(3) Those in homes where there are members 
of other churches. You are responsible for taking 
the Gospel to these people, and should seek to lead 
them to Christ, if no one else is making the attempt, 
no matter what church they may go into if they 
are saved. 

(4) Those in homes unrelated to any church 
through any one in their family. 

When you have completed the canvass of your 
territory and the listing of all non-church members, 
your harvest field is before you. Even the most 
earnest Christians will have little enthusiasm over 
a harvest they cannot see, and so it is of the utmost 
importance to get your harvest where you can see 
it, think about it, and pray over it. And the most 
cold and careless Christians — if they are Christians 
at all — will warm up and become enthusiastic when 
confronted by a possible harvest of hundreds, per- 
haps thousands, of real men, women, and children 
whose names and addresses you have before you. 

The indefinite "anywhereness" of your work is 
then gone, and the people will know exactly what 
they are about when they start out to obey the 
Great Commission. It is the indefiniteness of our 
methods of evangelism that defeats us more than 
any other one thing outside of our sin. 

Eighth, after the canvass is completed, gather 
both adults and young people together and get 
them to volunteer some definite time each week, 
from one hour up, for the doing of personal work 
with the lost. 



Organizing for Revival Meetings 189 

List all those who will start out in utter depend- 
ence on God to do that work, and form them into 
a class for both instruction and report on work 
done. 

List all the rest separately, letting them know 
that you expect all of them to get into the work of 
soul-winning as soon as they will, and meantime 
get them to volunteer some time weekly for any 
other work to which you can assign them, and then 
send them out with personal workers so that they 
may be inducted into that work, and also use them 
in any other work that will be a stepping-stone to 
personal evangelism. 

Then the personal workers should be brought to 
feel the responsibility for taking the Gospel to all 
the lost in their own district — and anywhere else 
the Holy Spirit leads them. To make this prac- 
tical, they should be assigned the names of definite 
ones as the pastor and they feel led, and if they 
work in other districts than their own they should 
do so in co-operation with the chairmen of those 
districts, so that confusion will not arise. 

Ninth, meet the chairmen and personal workers 
of all the districts once a week until the meetings 
begin, and have them report how many they have 
dealt with, how many have accepted Christ, and 
how many Christians who are not doing personal 
work they have tried to lead into the work. . Then 
turn this meeting into a prayer-meeting for the 
lost of your field. 

Tenth, within three or four weeks of the meet- 



190 Every-Member Evangelism 

ings arrange for cottage prayer-meetings in each 
district, in homes where there are unsaved, if pos- 
sible, and hold all the members of each district re- 
sponsible for the conduct, attendance and success 
of the meetings. It might stimulate interest if you 
had a weekly report of the proportion of members 
attending in each district, leaving out of the count 
those who were known to be unable to attend. 

AIAKING THIS PROGRAM PERMANENT 

Most pastors know by sad experience that a 
church will start out on a method of this sort with 
a great deal of enthusiasm, but that within a few 
months at most the whole thing has petered out. 
In most churches where there is a fair degree of 
enthusiasm in the general work of the church it 
is little trouble to get a new method of work 
started, especially if it looks practical and promises 
to produce results, but the tough part of the job 
is to keep it going. Can a church be kept perma- 
nently at work by this program? Not by virtue 
of any power inherent in the program itself. No 
program, however promising and practical, has any 
power to get itself followed. "Power belongeth 
unto God."^ 

There is a business method, however, that ought 
to be of as great value as anything can be outside 
the power of the Holy Spirit, and that is the uni- 
versal custom of reports on work done. The aver- 
age salesman would soon begin to lose out if he did 



^Psalm 62:11. 



Making This Program Permanent 191 

not make regular reports of everything he does for 
the firm, and besides this, the comparisons between 
his reports and those of other salesmen are of stim- 
ulating value all around. This method, therefore, 
will go about as far as anything human and me- 
chanical can go toward making the above program 
permanent. 

Blanks can be furnished for reporting all calls 
made and their results, and also a large blank on 
which the chairman of each district can summarize 
the work done in his district during the month. 
These blanks should be as simple and require as 
little work as possible and yet cover all the work 
done. 

Then there should be a meeting once a week 
either of each district by itself, or of all of them 
together, for prayer, study, and conference, and 
once a month all should meet together, at least all 
the officers of each district, and compare reports. 

At the monthly meetings suggestions can be made 
for the benefit of those whose districts seem to be 
least successful, and the general chairman can. per- 
haps arrange for some help to be rendered during 
the month ahead by some from the more successful 
districts. 

There is another thing that can also be done to 
make this program a permanent fixture in church 
life. It can be adapted to every variety of church 
work, for it is exceedingly flexible. 

For example, the pastor can be kept in constant 
touch, through the district organization, with his 



192 Every -Member Evangelism 

entire church membership, no matter how large it 
is, cases of absence from services, sickness, need, 
flagging interest, removals, and anything else he 
needs to have information on, being promptly re- 
ported. This eliminates all the loose ends, and 
puts the pastor's work for his members into such 
business-like shape that he can accomplish vastly 
more with the same time and effort. 

Through the same channels also the Sunday- 
school can be looked after, useless leakage stopped, 
and far more than the usual per cent of the scholars 
won to Christ and brought into the church. 

The Ladies', Men's and Young People's organ- 
izations can also be brought to a higher degree of 
fruitfulness than they have ever reached before, 
and any other organization of the church that has 
a vital mission can be put into most vigorous 
condition. 

One feature of this program that cannot pos- 
sibly be overestimated is that every member of the 
church, even down to the children, can be given 
something definite to do, and can be kept doing it. 

Then when you have anything special on in any 
department of church activity, you can turn the 
whole organization loose on that particular job. 
For example, suppose you have a contest on for 
Sunday-school scholars. You have every means 
at hand for thoroughly searching every nook and 
corner of your field for scholars. If a series of 
meetings is ahead, you can repeat the preparations 
suggested above, only with greatly increased effec- 



The Divine Dynamics 193 

tiveness. And in the social activities of the church, 
the various districts can be made responsible, in 
turn, for all the social occasions of the year. And 
when the end of your church year approaches, you 
have all the machinery at hand and in running order 
for the every-member canvass. 

These are the mechanics not only of a very effec- 
tive preparation for a series of evangelistic meet- 
ings, but especially of such an organization in any 
given church as will enable it seriously to under- 
take to obey the Great Commission according to 
the program of the Day of Pentecost. 

THE DIVINE DYNAMICS 

That which is of the utmost moment in this work, 
however, is not the mechanics but the dynamics. 
All the mechanics in the world will avail nothing 
apart from the power from on high. This work 
must be done, not by might, nor by power, but 
the Holy Spirit, The wheels are necessary, but 
the Living Spirit must be within the wheels before 
they will bear the lost to God! Therefore, prayer I 
prayer!! prayer!!! There may be some things we 
can overdo in this work, but prayer is not one of 
them. And so everything that is done must be 
saturated with the spirit of prayer. And then as 
the members go out into the homes of the lost in 
the field, the Holy Spirit will go before them, and 
such conviction of sin will result that many will be 
won to Christ in their own homes, and many others 
will come to church because they cannot stay away, 



194 Every- Member Evangelism 

and the pastor's sermons will prove to be the 
weekly climax of the work that is being constantly 
done throughout the field by consecrated soul- 
winners. 

A present-day example of how marvelously effec- 
tive this method of work may become is outlined 
in a story of a great work in the First Baptist 
church of Lowell, Massachusetts, which appeared 
in the '^Watchman-Examiner^' of April 19, 1917. 
This story is so practical that it is repeated here. 

"During the two and a half years in which the 
Rev. Arthur C. Archibald has been pastor of the 
First Baptist Church, Lowell, Mass., there has been 
a remarkable growth and development of the church 
in every respect. The missionary offerings have 
increased 50 per cent, the Sunday-school has gained 
35 per cent, making its present enrollment more 
than 1,200. Six hundred and forty-six new mem- 
bers have been received into the church, 420 of 
them within the last year, the present membership 
of the church being 1,670. During this period no 
evangelist has been called in, and no special meet- 
ings have been held, the great ingathering result- 
ing, as far as human agencies are concerned, from 
the enlisting of the members of the church in the 
work of definite, personal evangelism. 

**The first thing was the careful listing of every 
man, woman and child in the city not identified 
with any other church, and actually or construc- 
tively within the bounds of the field of the First 
Church. This list was obtained in many ways — 



The Divine Dynamics 195 

from the pastor^s visiting list, from the Sunday- 
school roll, from cards distributed at the services^ 
from information secured from the neighbors, and 
in other ways. The great thing was that when 
the pastor was ready to start his church out on its 
new campaign he knew the constituency upon which 
it was to work. There was nothing indefinite and 
haphazard about the venture. 

*The next thing was to put up a challenge to the 
church, which he did about a year ago. 'One hun- 
dred and fifty new members for the First Church 
to be won in ten weeks' was the slogan sounded. 
To accompHsh this he called for one hundred 
volunteers. Sixty-five responded to the first call, 
and the required number was secured through a 
little personal pressure. This year when the call 
was made for 150 for a similar work, all but three 
of the original one hundred responded at once, and 
there were 75 others ready to enlist. Says the 
pastor, 'Those who go through a work of this 
character are eager for it a second time. They 
know the taste of victory, and it is sweet. Their 
own souls are mightily edified' These volunteers 
constituted a 'Crusaders League of Soul- Winners,' 
entering into a covenant 'to make an honest efifort 
to win one soul to Christ and the church, to win 
that soul before a certain date (this year April 8), 
and to work under assignment of and in co-opera- 
tion with the pastor.' To each crusader a certain 
number of names were assigned by the pastor, to- 
gether with cards to be filled with information 



196 Every -Member Evangelism 

secured as a result of the visits made, and declara- 
tion cards to be signed when the persons visited 
had made their decision. The first call was sup- 
posed to be made within a week after the assign- 
ment and the information received sent at once to 
the pastor, who was thus able to know all the time 
just what work was being done, and by whom. The 
declaration cards when signed were returned to the 
pastor, who called at once upon the new convert 
to encourage and strengthen him in his decision, 
and urge him to unite with the church. The calls 
of the crusaders were not formal and perfunctory. 
They were distinctly and directly religious. Each 
worker was impressed with the fact that he was 
on the King's business with regard to those to 
whom he was sent. A name given to one was 
never given to another unless the first requested 
it, or until he had done his best to persuade the per- 
son named to accept Christ. Thus each was made 
to feel deeply his personal responsibility in the 
matter. In the course of the visitation many were 
found who had formerly been identified with the 
church, but who had lost interest and whose mem- 
bership had lapsed. These were encouraged to re- 
turn to the Lord, and to secure their church letters 
or unite with the First Church by experience. 

"The campaign covered a definite period — ten 
weeks. During this time the Sunday morning ser- 
mons were directed mainly to the thought of the 
relationship of Christians to the unsaved world, 
while those of the evening were warmly evangel- 



The Divine Dynamics 197 

istic. The city was divided into seven districts, 
with a neighborhood prayer-meeting in each dis- 
trict every Tuesday night. At the regular prayer- 
meeting on Friday night the workers were expected 
to be present with the converts secured by them 
during the week for public profession of their faith. 

'*Last year the ten weeks of campaigning ended 
in May, and instead of the 150 new members con- 
stituting the objective, on a single Sunday 174 
members were received into the church ! This year 
the effort was timed to terminate April 8 — Easter 
Sunday. The objective was still the same, but the 
overrun was even larger — 225 ! Of this number 
208 were present to receive the hand of fellowship, 
the others being detained for various reasons. 

"The scene on Easter Sunday will not soon be 
forgotten. The house was packed to its utmost 
capacity. Before his sermon Pastor Archibald 
baptized 24 children from the Sunday-school, the 
'lambs of the flock' held for baptism until this time, 
the adults having been baptized on previous Sun- 
days. The associate editor of the *Watchman-Ex- 
aminer' had the privilege of saying a few words of 
greeting and admonition to the new members, who 
rose and stood before him, a good-sized church in 
themselves. About 80 per cent of the number were 
adults, about equally divided between men and 
women. Fifty-one were young men. There were 
27 husbands and wives, and five whole families, and 
in seven instances more than two adults came from 
one family. It was a stirring sight, but not more 



198 Every- Member Evangelism 

so than that of the standing together of the band 
of Crusaders, nearly 150 in number, who rose to 
receive a message of appreciation and exhortation 
from the pastor. Happy the pastor who can look 
on such a company of workers as that ! Blessed 
the church with such a corps of workers ! 

**In the return of the information cards those 
which represent cases apparently hopeless are not 
thrown aside, but are carefully filed away for the 
next campaign. Mr. Archibald asserts that a most 
valuable feature of this method of work is that, *so 
far from exhausting the field of possible additions, 
each successive campaign enlarges it and makes it 
ready for another campaign to follow. Visitation 
in homes where there is little or no interest awakens 
attention and gradually wins to church attendance, 
and so prepares many for a future appeal who were 
entirely unready to respond at the first approach. 
Scores have been received into the church in the 
present effort who one year ago were utterly un- 
moved.' As to the effect of this kind of work on 
the church itself he says: The church has risen 
to a consciousness of its own inherent strength. 
You cannot persuade the people of the First Church 
to-day to send for an evangelist, for they know 
what they themselves can do. They are ready to 
respond to any task, for for two years they have 
found that they have been able to do what at one 
tim.e they thought was impossible. This method has 
exhilarated the whole church life." 

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that what 



The Divinq Dynamics 199 

Christ commanded in the Great Commission is in- 
dividual work for individuals. An organization 
called the Church cannot discharge the obligation to 
obey the Great Commission resting on each indi- 
vidual Christian. 

Therefore, if the church to which you belong is 
not helping every membef" to get into this work by 
a systematic division of territory and labor, that in 
no wise relieves you of your responsibility. You 
must go in person after lost men and women and 
seek to lead them to Christ, or live in perpetual 
disobedience to your Lord. Others are going. The 
Lord will enable you. 

A Sunday School Times stenographer made a 
list of about twenty acquaintances, and went after 
them and won them for Christ. 

A girl thirteen years old led ten of her com- 
panions into the inquiry room during a three weeks' 
evangelistic meeting which the writer conducted in 
Hamilton, Canada. 

A salesman who was in many of the meetings of 
a campaign conducted by the writer in Dr. Russell 
H. Conwell's church in Philadelphia, had at that 
time led five thousand and eighty-six to Christ. 
Several of the converts of the meetings resulted 
from his work. 

You can go after the lost too. And you will, if 
the love of God fills and impels you. Sophie the 
scrubwoman said, ''Some people said they saw me 
talking to a wooden Indian outside a cigar store. 
That might be so, I don't know. My eyesight is 



200 Every- Member Evangelism 

poor. But that ain't so bad as being a wooden 
Christian that never talks for Jesus at all." 

But you say, ''I don't know how." Neither does 
any one else when they start out. In one of Dr. 
Torrey's meetings in England he was insisting that 
the only way to learn how to do personal work is 
to do it. Afterwards an earnest Christian man 
said, "Why, that's exactly where I have been mak- 
ing my mistake. For years I have had an intense 
desire to be able to deal personally with men and 
women and point them to Christ; but on every 
occasion when the opportunity has presented itself, 
I have shrunk back, thinking I was unqualified for 
the work, and making way for those who appeared 
to have a special gift in this direction. Now I see 
that they must have begun just where I must begin 
— without any practical experience. After this I 
am going to take the very first chance I get to speak 
with an inquirer, and trust God for the guidance 
and wisdom necessary." No one can ever learn to 
do personal work in any way except to start out 
and do it, as God leads. 

But you say again, **I have no opportunity." 
But you do ! They are all about you. Dr. How- 
ard W. Pope tells a story that illustrates this fact. 

Holding meetings in California, he said at one 
of the services that he believed every Christian had 
both the ability and the opportunity to bring Christ 
to the lost. At the close of the service a woman 
came to him and objected that she was a poor, hard- 
working widow, with several children dependent 



The Divine Dynamics 201 

on her, and that she had neither time nor oppor- 
tunity to do such work. 

Dr. Pope asked: "Do your neighbors never xall 
to see you?" "Rarely." "Does the grocer call?" 
"Yes." "Is he a Christian?" "I don't know." 
"Does the milkman ever call at your house?" *'Yes, 
every day." "Is he a Christian?" "I don't know 
whether he is or not, and I don't consider it my busi- 
ness to ask him, either," and the woman went away 
very angry. She couldn't rest very well after she 
went to bed that night, and finally determined she 
would make it her business to find out whether 
these men were saved. 

The next morning the milkman ran up the steps, 
emptied his pail, started to run out, when the 
woman gasped, "Milkman!" "Oh, an extra quart 
to-day?" emptying another quart into the pail. 
"Oh, no, but are you a Christian?" The man 
turned on her with a look she never forgot. *'No, 
and I don't care a fig about being one, either. 
Do you remember the meetings held last winter? 
Well, I was interested then, and if I had been 
invited would have attended. Someway, I thought 
perhaps you would Hke to talk to me about it, 
but you didn't, and no one seemed to care whether 
I was a Christian or not, and now I tell you I 
don't care. I have lost all interest in those things," 
and he turned on his heel and ran down the steps. 

The poor woman threw herself prostrate upon 
the floor and in agony of spirit promised her Lord 
if he would forgive her past neglect she would 



202 Every -Member Evangelism 

never let another opportunity pass without speaking 
a word for her Master. 

When Dr. Pope called two years later to hold 
meetings again she related her experience and 
added : 

"Six of the seven men that call regularly at my 
home in a business way are Christians; all have 
been converted during these two years — all bu"* 
the milkman." 

Christian, some one is waiting right now for you 
to go to them with the story of salvation. And 
the one who died for you — and for them — is wait- 
ing for you to go. He has commanded it. He will 
enable you. Will you go? 



W. B. c. 



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